Reveries

The Spark of Unbearable Compassion - On the life and work of a good friend of mine

2011-01-16T12:44:00.029+05:30

"If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain."
-Emily Dickinson-

Well, the title of this post came from a report in "Shambala Sun" on my dear friend Sunitha Krishnan.

http://www.shambhalasun.com/sunspace/?p=12988

Thought i will do something that could further the cause of well-being of many we do not know. When we cannot reach out to many, I feel the best possible way to further that cause is to support the people who do it as their life’s principal mission.

One name came flashing to my mind when I came across this announcement on a sleepless night’s random googling – My dear good friend Dr. Sunitha Krishnan. She perhaps needs no introduction to many, there is so much written about her all over, her recent TED talk turned out to be a pathfinder talk. When thousands of suffering strangers need the help of people like Sunitha, She needs our help to reach out further and do more.

Well, I have been watching her rather closely over the years, as the organization grew, as she became increasingly popular …some times even as our communication became minimal, I really wondered …”did she get carried away “ , a doubt that lingered to my mind for quite some time till the day she was bestowed with the 2008 Real Heros Award by the CNN-IBN award presented by Nita Ambani . I switched on the TV, gathered people around me to show them Sunitha, and to my utter dismay I did not see Sunitha walking up to the dais to receive the award from Ms. Nita Ambani, instead I saw her father receiving the award. Quite startled and curious to know how could she miss out this opportunity to “be there” I called her up and came her reply “ I was in a meeting elsewhere, so could not go !” .

Some time later I came across this 7 page article in October 2008 issue of ‘Reader’s Digest’ that had her attitude further exemplified. She was invited by the South Korean Government to help them improve the shelters for victims of trafficking. Being a government guest, she was offered accommodation at the best place in South Korea….and she shocked the South Korean officials when she insisted that she wants to stay in a local brothel to study the situation closely. Well, here is the full story :

http://www.slideshare.net/pilgrimhawk/sunitha-krishnan-readersdigestarticleoct2008

So while that defines her attitude to luxury and honours, I also realize that people like her cannot really shy away from awards and honours, more so when it brings in much needed funds and resources to keep the crusade running. I do realize the import of what Sunitha wrote in here , now I notice that the blog was posted by her at 3.02 AM ( an older one ) !

here is Sunitha's blog

Here is some Information on Sunitha :

Videos:

Ink Talk Video

Sunitha's TED-India 2009 Talk – Video

Touching, saving 3200 lives and on and on

The Ugly Truth: Has A Disha (Hope)

The Sex Slave Rescuer- An Interview clip – Video

PBS Interview on Sunitha Krishnan-Video

Prajwala - New Rehabilitation Centre, Hyderabad

Print Media Reports:

The Spark of Unbearable Compassion: Sunitha Krishnan speaks at TEDIndia

Dr. Sunitha Krishnan Conferred with CNN IBN 'Real Heroes' Award

Keeping hope alive Real-life hero

Interpid Foe of India’s Sex Industry – 2008 Reader’s Digest Feature

She sets the bonded free

Anti-Trafficking Crusader Sunitha Krishnan Fights To Save Women & Girls In India

Sunitha Krishnan and Prajwala – Fighting for trafficked children

TED gain: $100,000 in 20 minutes, all for a cause

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
- Elie Wiesel -

Of Miners' rescue and Assembly trust vote ...

2010-10-14T02:11:00.002+05:30

Anxious hours for any sentient being on earth as they watch/ think of the Chilean miners being rescued one by one.

… and a bit more anxiety for the politically aware ones in Bangalore because in a few hours another trust vote will decide the political fate of Kar”nataka” state assembly. Watching the latest development in the state’s political scene used to be a daily dose of entertainment after I reach from work . I was constantly tracking the moves and political acrobatics of these jokers until the Chilean heroes caught my attention .

There the Chilean president is right on ground zero where the miners are being rescued on a 30 hours stretch operation. The Bolivian president is flying in to Chile to take home with him the only Bolivian miner among the 33 trapped miners. Their elected leaders are their guardian angels too. Looks like sensible leaders can be chosen only by sensible people.

The Karnataka politicians will spend a sleepless night wondering who will win and who will rule….who will cook, who will serve and who will eat, praying to their deities for boons to gratify their greed . Their counterparts in Chile too will spend a sleepless night praying for the safe rescue of all the miners, cheering up every one getting out of the rescue capsule after 69 days’ ordeal 700 meters below, there they stand as true elected representatives, together with the ones who elected them , in the hour of need.

Why did all our news channels celebrate this ongoing political fiasco in Karnataka with of course hearty interludes of Commonwealth games updates. It appears that the proceedings of Karnataka assembly will be telecast live tomorrow… and we are there to watch the jokers in action again.

On the other hand BBC seemed to have celebrated the entire Chilean operation with a live coverage.

Does this have any pedagogical value dear learned pedagogues ?

Yes there is in abundance…. for , what else could be a better example of true heroism, team spirit, compassion, reverence for life, brotherhood, high precision engineering, brilliant task management.

Are you listening dear pedagogues ?...or are you busy constructing , deconstructing new post-neo-hyper modern theories of learning, knowledge production, distribution ? ( looks like a new supply chain process)

I could not control my tears as I saw the Chilean miners emerged one by one… seeing the whole nation rejoicing … seeing how technology became a path with a heart… seeing the way a rescued miner opened his little bag, just after he got out of the rescue capsule, took out some candies and distributed it to people around. Here is a man , who has not seen sunlight for 69 days, reaching out … seeing clearly through his dark goggles… how true what the little kid said in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince : “ What is essential is invisible to the eyes, it is only with the heart you can truly see “ .

Are we blinded by too much light?

For the trapped miners the first step on earth was freedom …and for us we need wings for flights of freedom out of earth’s bounds.

So, Freedom too is relative ?

Semantic rains ...

2010-07-29T20:07:00.012+05:30

A rainy evening, a soulful conversation...then a walk in the rain right on through the memory lane with those scenes from Shaji M Karun's Malayalam movie flashing forth in my mind . I do not know of any other malayalam movie other than "Piravi" that captured the nostalgic bliss of rains in Kerala while depicting the silent plight of a dying father waiting for his long lost son's return.

Came home and got on to the internet to look for Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan's violin composition "Cauvery"...and stumbled upon this magnificent video of Dr.L Subramanyam and his son Ambi Subramanyam playing together.
Like father...Son

... this father waiting for his lost son

Saw 2 fathers and one son in 10 minutes, both on youtube - one in extreme silent agony and the other in eloquent ecstatic symphony.

... and the connecting thread, rains again, weaved a pattern that connects both - the quotes from "Kaushitaki Upanishad" in the beginning of the movie "Piravi" .

Father : My speech in you I would place
Son : Your speech in me I take

Father : My breath in you I would place
Son : Your breath in me I take

Father : My eye in you I would place
Son : Your eye in me I take

Father : My ear in you I would place
Son : Your ear in me I take

Father : My tastes in you I would place
Son : Your tastes in me I take

Father : My deeds in you I would place
Son : Your deeds in me I take

Father : My pleasure and pain in you I would place
Son : Your pleasure and pain in me I take

Father : My bliss, delight and procreation in you I would place
Son : Your bliss, delight and procreation in me I take

Father : My goings in you I would place
Son : Your goings in me I take

Father : My mind in you I would place
Son : Your mind in me I take

Father : My intelligence in you I would place
Son : Your intelligence in me I take

A Dying man's bequest to his son - Kaushitaki Upanishad

Long live Web 3.0

2010-03-18T21:21:00.006+05:30

wow..what more do we need to believe that we are living in the web 3.0 era...

Google ads just proved it incredibly well.

The basic funda of google ads is that it places ads relevant to the content , then a set of complex algorithms decide on the exact nature of the ad placed on the page. Well, this is my understanding of it and I could a bit less informed, but surely not absolutely wrong.

so let us look at Web V1.0, 2.0, 3.0

Web 1.0 – That Geocities & Hotmail era was all about read-only content and static HTML websites. People preferred navigating the web through link directories of Yahoo! and dmoz.

Web 2.0 – This is about user-generated content and the read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in the Web 2.0 era.

Web 3.0 – This will be about semantic web (or the meaning of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search and behavioral advertising among other things.

and this is what i came across few minutes back... looking for updates on the newsed up trancey-sexed up Paramahamsa Nithyananda of Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam.

My God, did you see that : "Paramahamsa" - how beautiful it looked as a suffix in "Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa" and how out of place it looks as a prefix before the name of the one in context, on news headlines these days.

Web 3.0 seems to have understood it still better.

Check out this

it is quite possible that there is a new ad in place of what i saw few minutes back.

so, this is what i saw ..may be what you can still see:

Please click on the image to enlarge

see the text inside the red outline just below the news headline on the godman and his befitting counterpart. I still cannot figure out how on earth this ad on "sanitary ware" got in place just below the news headline because nothing on the entire web page has any content even remotely connected to the ad, except of course the protagonists in the news headline :-)

Marvin Minsky defines AI thus :
"Artificial Intelligence ( AI) is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men"

Well, i am not a strong AI proponent, but this typical advertisement below this specific news headline baffles me outright. But the point is that the web too understands what is the right ad to place along with crap news on crappier people.

This ad with its timely appearance on this specific news page seems to have scaled the metaphorical depths of the news and its readers' psyche.

yes, we need better sanitaryware within us, to flush out the dirt within and to flush these bigots out of our minds!!

..and yes, i remember the first principle I learnt as a novice in the area of computer science : " Garbage in, garbage out".

there could not be any better ad than the sanitary ware ad for this news item...

Long live Web 3.0 ...can't wait for web 4.0

:-)

tiger, tiger burning bright ( on TV) ...

2010-01-10T22:10:00.001+05:30

More of fallen Tiger Woods
on TV
than the rising star
he once was!

... we envied him first,
then emulated him and
later worshiped him
as a superhuman.

Now, when he fell from glory
and became just one of us
we scorn him
and denounce him
outright.

Quo vadis?

Zorba the Geek aka Ravi Saldanha - Part 1

2009-04-23T11:22:00.002+05:30

Few kindred souls – my friends have been repeatedly imploring me to resume my blogging . May be that's why I feel the inclination to write now. I wonder how much of the random thoughts/reflections/memories that ripple across my mind are worth converting into blogs and how many of such blogs are worth being called 'blogs', and how many among them really worth reading. But then this thought too could be one such, So I guess you need not take it seriously and get going :-) – that is to read, reflect and respond.

For long I refrained from blogging because I was obsessively concerned about the quality of what I write ( i felt i have to do a good deal of home work on my writing) – it terms of cadence, style and literary merit and I am sure that in that self imposed exile I have missed out sharing a lot of what nourished, enriched and sustained me. So from now onwards I will just go on recording my impressions – memories , dreams and reflections on this blog page – yet another billboard of a soul on the information highway. Oh...those two words – 'soul' and 'highway' reminds me of those lines from the song “Objects in the rear view mirror “ by MeatLoaf :

… “But it was long ago and it was far away, oh God it seems so very far
And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are“

Click here for the song video>>

I guess I must define the word “CLOSER” as NOT a frightening, ghostly image from the past, instead an endearing, enduring flash or remembrance of the bygone. It cannot be but “closer” to our being right? :-)

Moving out of Amrita campus and setting up a dwelling in Hyderabad gave me what I missed all along over the last 8 years . Eight years in Amrita was sheer delight but I had a price to pay as well , ie. time for myself – time to read , reflect and some times just do nothing. Now I understand how important it is to find time for oneself for, it is only during those moments one can look back in retrospect and reflect. I really do now know how am I going to express my gratitude to my wife Laxmi who took upon herself the responsibility to run our home and let me be with myself. What ever good thing I do will obviously have its deep bearing on the sacrifice she made to bequeath unto me these moments of pilgrimage within. I owe her the same thing... now my dream is to see her having time for herself just the way I revel on. Must get going soon...

Eight years of sheer delight in Amrita – I will remain thankful to the campus and the students who made my inner landscape greener and richer. It has become so internalized that those eight years form an integral part of my mindscape. Now as I reflect in retrospect I realize that many things that happened in my life eventually prepared me for that wonderful phase of my life at Amrita.

Eight years with students from the age group of 16-25 and mind you I was not into teaching. I first walked into the campus, during a terrible phase of my life, as a 28 year old angry young man – confused about career, resentful about relationships and regretful of the mistakes I made...angry with myself and the rest of the world as well I have always wondered how could I get along well with those sweet little frivolous teenagers. There is an old saying that I love “If you are comfortable with yourself, you will be comfortable with others”. Sure, I was so utterly disturbed and perturbed with remorse and retribution swelling up to monstrous levels.

But I did not drown... I was gracefully kept afloat. I have always wondered how and why it happened thus.

Thankfully many things that got infused into my being unawares blossomed forth. Who sowed those seeds that germinated in inner conditions that I deemed hostile all through...or perhaps those seeds were ordained to sprout in such conditions...

As I ponder I am discovering the answers steadily and I realize there are many factors (events and people) I'd love to remain grateful unto my last.

Here is one man who played a decisive role in preparing me thus – my friend Ravi Stephan Saldanha. I write this not just to express my gratitude and reverence for what he was to me then , it is also to redeem the evolving possibilities and primarily to reflect on something that left me awe struck few days back after a brief conversation with him. But before I get at it, one must get a glimpse of passionate-maverick-bubbly fine young man with fire in his belly – and that qualifies him to be called “Zorba the Geek”.

But first one needs to know who Zorba was. Please watch this clipping from the movie “Zorba the Greek”.

This is more of a very personal narrative...but I am sure that it will give enough glimpses ( through Ravi) of what it takes to remain a true friend and above all a gentle human being. Wow..i have been waiting for these moments....to stretch back and get lost in remembrance of things past... reliving instances and events that will once again take me to the brink of tears... get soaked in those swirling waters of memories...get basked in the radiance of deeds of kindness and goodness I have been so fortunate enough to be bestowed on. It is going to be nothing less than a pilgrimage for me to walk down the memory lane thus during these days when friendship too revolves around the words “win win-trade off-deals”. Remembering the goodness of others with a deep sense of gratitude and benediction is a deeply moving experience, which often helps us invoke those qualities in us as well. I do not know of a better way of purifying oneself.

What follows will justify it.

After a phase of drifting, when my father found me heading no where and I had no idea of where to go, I joined Hindustan Aviation Academy. Thanks to my father who was kind enough to spend on me again on education at a time when people expected the eldest son to support the family. Thus began the three and a half years of my life as a full time student. Being in a class with fresh +2 graduates, I must have been 24+ I guess then, was initially an experience that made me question my worth even as an individual, leave alone as an aspiring aviation professional. Things became tough when my seniors who came to rag me discovered that I am much elder to them...and sure it must have given them an added pleasure of having a go at me testifying their ragging sophistication. My peers in the class soon gave me an elder-brother-classmate status though my seniors often saw me as a good specimen to fine tune their ragging skills...thus followed the initial few months of anxiety and terrible self doubt.

So there I was in 1995, in a college trying to pursue a highly competitive profession with classmates good number of years younger to me. I was literally on a 'wing and a prayer' in the cloudy sky of self doubt... lot of lonely walks and introspections oscillating between the extremes of new beginnings and points of no return !

That's the time I noticed Ravi first, who apparently got along well with some of the toughest seniors. I initially had a feeling that he is one of those rich spoilt NRI brats and I came to know that he stayed some where deep , alone in a house in the Munnakolala outskirts of Bangalore. Once I walked down to see that place , envying him deep within for having a place all for himself, and once I saw the place my envy became sympathy. I wondered how on earth could this guy born and brought up in Dubai find himself at ease and peace in such a remote place. As I observed him keenly the sympathy I had for him for this terribly lonely predicament of his gradually turned into appreciation for his uncanny ability to get along with people and bubbly sense of humour, some times streaks of sheer brilliance also shone forth when we were in a group discussing something technical. But we were yet to really talk to each other. The first break for that came during the tea break of our college morning sessions.

I was just walking out of the class and he was going out of the campus. He saw me and asked 'coming out?'. As we walked along he asked 'do you smoke?' ...I said 'sometimes' , he had a good laugh at it while he too said 's-o-m-e-t-i-m-e-s'. Initially I think he gave me a good listening and soon I found myself listening when he began to talk. I will never forget that day when he started questioning me outright, challenging my views, presenting alternate views on many things we discussed. It took me quite some time to come in terms with the fact that here is this 18 year old classmate of mine literally flooring me with his incisive reasoning. It was quite a bitter pill to swallow then for, till then I enjoyed immediate acceptance of whatever I spoke to my classmates – I had the taken for granted advantage of being few years elder to them. But then I was feeling out of place all the while because no one really considered me one-among-them and I was pining to feel that togetherness of certain amount of frivolousness and impulsiveness in interactions among peers. Ravi's fierce arguments with me gave me that – I began to feel belonged with no barrier of 'elderliness' in between. Though he took me quite by surprise with his wit, passion with which he did things and deep insights into many things that baffle most of us, he was gentle enough to be explained to when I had a slight upper edge at times ( those occasions were rare though ). He argued and explained with effortless ease, striking originality and most of the time won with abiding grace.

Tea breaks turned fag-sessions soon began to gather more people. Even the ones who did not drink tea of smoked began to join the 10 minute expedition to 'dada's shop' in Marathahalli. They were there to be a part of the stimulating discussions that ranged from movies to metaphysics. It is during one such sessions Ravi displayed his maverick wisdom when some one joined us , we had asked for one tea meant to be divided into two (by 2 or /2 ), and it was just time to rush back. Ravi had no qualms in telling dada to make it /3. That was quite unheard of , dada gazed at him with some sense of consternation! A small glass of tea divided into 2 was till then considered to be the maximum drinkable divisibility. Ravi proved further divisibility and dada from then on had no problem in make /3 tea though it meant less business for him. Well, that was the charm of his expressions which had an inherent persuasiveness that one would happily give into.

Soon those sessions extended to lengthy lunch break. It was quite a scene … people pinching off chappati portions form his plate and when left alone, there was that quintessential Ravi sharing his meal with stray dogs too...some times I have seen him feeding them as well. I had read and heard about the web of life-interconnectedness-compassion to living creatures. But Ravi showed me what it is to feel connected. Though I could never elevate myself to that realm of exemplifying reverence for life , I realized that it is possible for, I could see a living embodiment of it on a day to day basis. So there was this 19 year old guy who by then had become my biggest intellectual challenge and often I looked upon him for guidance as well during those intermittent phases of delusion. It did not take Ravi much to make me realize that age has nothing to do with maturity , an important reckoning that kept me going all through my 8 years at Amrita.

I have always wondered how did Ravi end up doing Avionics engineering in a college that was not quite known then. This guy with his abilities should have been in one of those Ivy-league colleges . I have often felt that Ravi got misguided into this programme. With his inherent curiosity and intelligence he should have been in a place with the finest professors and the best experimental facilities. I got to see Ravi's versatility after the Avionics engineering programme as he went on to become a Geek - a self taught programmer-techie of the maverick kind. We will have a few glimpses of it later.

It was fun watching him ride his bike-he had a Yamaha RX100 (later he bought an Enfield Bullet) that he rode like a Harley Davision. I was in for another shock when some one told that he began riding to the college through Bangalore city traffic with minimum learning practice. No just that, he mostly rode with a pillion rider. I will never forget the fist ride on his bike … it was scary! But then I felt thus only once, after the first ride you feel as if you got enough field experience on Ravi’s bike riding to trust his alertness an instincts for a life time. I got to ride with him many times after that I never got petrified again at his speed or maneuvering. You just feel that this guy is in total control of his bike and the bike responds to him as well like a tamed wild horse. This is my earliest glimpse into man-machine synchronicity – some thing I continue to see in him till this day, be it handling a bike or guitar or any other gadget. Machines responded to him as if they are extensions of his being. That was my first initiation into man-machine synchronicity which I later experienced at Amrita – the only difference was that my interaction was with a couple of web servers. The synchronicity I observed with Ravi and his bike, and later what ever gadgets he handled with ease, is what later opened up pathways for me to work on technologies and platforms I never got formally trained on. The way Ravi stayed in communion with literally every part of his bike and his favourite gadgets made me understand one thing – that apparently inanimate objects can respond and become an extension of your being if you take care of them as an indispensable unit that will facilitate your explorations and expressions.

Music used to be another topic we used to discuss a lot on. I was just a novice in the world of world-music. Though I could not quite listen to much Jazz music , one of his Ravi's intense passions, with him during our college days , later when I got to listen to a bit of Jazz and read about the background of Jazz I got to understand Ravi a bit deeper - his favorite music too defines his inner profile – spontaneity and originality issuing forth with child like glee and abandon. One day I heard him humming a beautiful tune in the class...so captivating even in its humming form itself. When I asked him about it he told it is John Devner's song “Anne's Song”... later he sang it as well in his shack like dwelling in Wilson Garden, he played his guitar too and sang “Anne's song” with such deep self absorption. That was another insight into Ravi.

His shack like dwelling in Wilson Garden...that brings back torrents of memories. Being a typical 'joie de vivre' one , he had little concern for even locking his home. His innate trust-all nature later took a heavy toll on him. But the way he handled his losses makes me call him a indefatigable-magnificent loser as well. I love this beautiful poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
...in Ravi I see a living embodiment of that poem.

                                        From that onwards in my next post.

               I must call him now to wish him. Today is his birthday.

                              ...and this is the first birthday gift to him!

... a friend's expressions of reverence, affection and gratitude.

Post VIDYA post ...

2009-04-03T21:19:00.000+05:30

This is the longest spell ever of my being away from Amrita University campus , Ettimadai and it has brought in a terrible sense of missing ... the students, working on VIDYA and the noise in the hostel. All those provided the vital escape door from the quagmire of uncertainties and ghosts of the past.

It looks like the escape door too escaped, perhaps to resurface as the entrance door...

The only way to relive my VIDYA days now is to walk down the memory lane ...i have a lot of people to thank and a story to tell as well. Hence this blog on VIDYA

Peter’s principle with an example

2009-04-02T21:29:00.000+05:30

X : Her internet connection should be taken off !

Y : Why?

X: She seems to have time only for checking her mails during office hours resulting in total negligence at work.

Y: Well, if she looks out through her window watching a train passing by, will you go and stop the train?

Vidya Story

2008-07-27T10:03:00.002+05:30

Here's the 'Building of Vidya Story' many had asked for... though not fully told, i guess it conveys the essence of my 7 years with students@Amrita University.

Check out this new letter , it has the interview and more:

http://www.amrita.edu/ase/coimbatore/astha/anweshi4.pdf

The aftermath of a spell of writer's block

2008-06-01T16:10:00.000+05:30

Your lips flutter
like red wings
of a butterfly
from word to word.

I gasp and run
in a desperate bid
to pluck the flowers
you perched on
and gather them all
into the vase of silence.

But unawares I pin down
the coordinates on the mindscape
making it yet another plot
of buds yet to bloom
and seeds still to germinate,
while you vanished…

Or is it you
divided into further fullness
breathing life into the caterpillars
clinging to the buds.

God's Great Banana Skin

2007-07-28T21:08:00.000+05:30

When i was rushing to office this morning all that i had in mind was the task ahead - to finish the work that had of late begun to create so much of mental noise that rendered every attempt to sleep to a restless silence of cacophony .

Its just when i turned to climb down the stairs i noticed that banana peal hung on the window grills, some one threw hunger out of the windows and there it remained - a relic of careless abandon or a suspended expression of playfulness.

The misty mountains in the backdrop and a tilt frame added a mystic touch to the whole perception Chris Rea's album title "God's Great Banana Skin" found a new cover then...

Here's Rea's Song 'God's Great Banana Skin' :

Go down my road running just as fast as I can
Nobody knows which is the better way
But when that man in the sky points his finger at you
Don't you ever think no-ones better than you

Gods great banana skin
Don't you laugh at nobody
Youll let the bad luck in
Gods great banana skin
Its the way that it gets you
With every day good luck comes in the strangest of ways
Just keep your head down dont listen what your ego will say
cos when that man in the sky points his finger at you
Don't you ever think no-ones better than you

Gods great banana skin
Gonna get you
Gods great banana skin

- Chris Rea › God’s Great Banana Skin -

We let the banana rot and end up worshiping the banana skin - God's great banana skin we pealed off !

The Rain Song

2007-07-01T07:50:00.000+05:30

Rain comes drifting down
as if the glowing embers of longing
suddenly turned into
dew drops sprinkled
on parched eyes.

Rain comes wafting down
like the tears that swell
as you touch the forehead
of your beloved
sleeping like a baby.

Rain comes raging down
as gushing blood
through the veins once sucked dry
by the fear of the unknown.

Rain comes gracing down
dancing in the breeze of solace
on the burnt skin of subdued throbs.
...So true,
how ‘delicate is the sound of thunder’ *!

Rain comes blazing down
in a backdrop of lightning streaks
of electrified perceptions
entranced by the synchronized
light and sound dance
right here and now!

How i wish
i dissolve like a speck of salt
in the surge that swirls and swells
and flows
before i sleep tonight
dreaming of the rainbow
i am sure to see tomorrow
going through
yet another spell of transcendence
and stint of lingering to
Too!

* i saw the Pink Floyd album "Delicate Sound of Thunder" years back in a music shop in Bangalore...The title fascinated me all through but never found a living context till last night.

Morning Song

2007-06-25T12:05:00.000+05:30

It was not just a potential haiku when you wrote it then - a caption to one of my photographs.

It is more than Three years since you wrote and it is well over a year of estrangement between us as well.

Never thought that the photograph I took of a faded leaf drifting along the river would find such a befitting expression depicting the saga of someone who always strived to reach out.

Today a brisk walk to work and there I saw this yellow-blue leaf in a puddle of water and a closer look brought forth the reflection of the trees near by

...My friend, for a few moments I felt I found you, you reached home...carrying the memories of many a forest and landscape...You came home renewed, much like the way spring redeems winter’s devastation, you came along singing the joyous morning song that once sounded like a subdued swansong.

"Set adrift to seek a destiny of it’s own
Carrying the memories of a Tree!"

Farewell My Friend

2007-05-31T16:38:00.000+05:30

You left,
finally,
leaving a few contrails of silence
in the sky of remembrence.

Shared tasks, chasing deadlines,
instructions, modifications, clarifications
and desperations
will never mean
the same again.

Tonight, when I change
the server password and mail it
to a list with your name struck off,
I know I will realize
with a tearing sense of forlornness
that you have not
gone on a long leave, instead
you have left
never to return !

( Dedicated to Pradeep )

To My Amrita Alumni/ Student Fraternity

2007-05-11T14:26:00.000+05:30

Dear Alumni/ Friends and Current Students,

It is my joy to remain related to Amrita Student Fraternity– My 6 years of existence here was made meaningful by the wonderful set of students @ Amrita. Every endeavor I ventured into was enriched and strengthened by the active participation of students of which Project VIDYA – Amrita Digital Library was a major initiative. What began as a modest collection has come a long way and this would not have been possible without you all – Amrita Student fraternity. Being with you all was a wonderful learning experience that forged a deep sense of belonging and bonding which I will cherish unto my last. All this amounted building VIDYA a sheer labor of love. Since I consider Project VIDYA as my major initiative and many of our alumni keep asking about it’s status now I feel the time has come, as I cruise through the last stretch of my stint here, to appraise you all about Project VIDYA in a nutshell to begin with. Please check out this URL that has a brief write up on VIDYA.

http://www.amrita.edu/ase/coimbatore/vidya/index.htm

My reach through this medium is limited, I wish you forward it whomever it really matters – The alumni, current students and prospective students as well so that they remain informed about the learning resource we have which will help all utilize it better. I bequeath VIDYA unto you all. Please let me know your ideas on opinions on VIDYA, wish to work on VIDYA and enrich it till the last moment of my bidding adieu to Ettimadai.

Of Tolle, Google and a Few Kindred Souls – A pattern That Connects

2006-11-15T12:11:00.003+05:30

I still remember how fiercely I despised that book “ The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle just because I saw it branded a self improvement book. For months together I did not even bother to touch that book though I passed by the railway station news stand and street sellers and book shops at various places. My aversion for self improvement books got all the more fierce after I read Sheldon B Kopp's “If you Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him !”. Few months back I was checking out the new arrivals at the railway station books shop and I ended up picking up the very book I hitherto abhorred. I just wanted to read the last few pages of it to see if it is really worth buying it… and I ended up beginning from the very last sentence – rather the very last question and answer :

Q: When do I know that I have surrendered?

A: When you no longer need to ask that question.

That hit me hard…really hard that I felt ( for a few moments) as if a huge pile of my prejudice just dissolved in the sheer forcefulness of that statement. . A simple answer to one of the most difficult questions … an answer that summarizes the entire teachings of Tolle and perhaps all the Masters who grace(d) this planet.

If it is providence that made me pick up that book in a way I have never done before, then I felt convinced that this is going to lead to another divine decree call it (cosmic coincidences if you like) with much deeper implications. Few days back I searched on the net for more information on Tolle and with absolutely no surety of getting anything from Google video ( since copyright protected videos hardly appear on Google-video archive) I searched for Tolle videos , got an entire listing of it and downloaded almost everything, I was so excited at the possibility of it reaching real seekers , the very thought of these videos reaching those whom I felt would be immensely benefited by it… that will add a deeper dimension of peace and meaning to their lives used to boost up my energy levels to sit through the nights and download those high quality videos.

I had a few people in my mind to give it to…yes , from the sophisticated, learned and the evolved ones to the distraught and lonely ones . I was sure that this will help many to unlearn and learn afresh. I was more inclined to let it all flow towards the latter domain because to the former it would be just another precious thing to quote and possess and to the letter it will be solace and guidance they can live with that will definitely help them live through as well. The first one I picked was an old academician who had done much for this place…who had his time of power and glory till one day when he was unceremoniously eased from the inner circles. He soon became a lonely man with hardly any one around . A well read man, I saw this erudite scholar who often appeared to me as an impenetrable wall of prejudice gently turn into an approachable grandfather figure. I really could not believe myself when he used to walk into my cabin and ask “do have any new books”…”what is your opinion on this…” and then walk out pulling back the chairs to its place. This man who shook this campus once with rules and restrictions seemed to be coming out of his soul cages of power induced ego and knowledge induced prejudice.

I wanted him to have Tolle’s video lectures , I just felt that it is going to touch his life in a significant way. When I mentioned that I’d love to write a DVD of Tolle Videos for him , he was just so eager to have it. He at once got up to go and buy 2 DVDs . The next day morning I saw him waiting for me in my cabin and I handed over the DVD to him. Given the fact that he is the man who used to criticize anything and everything , the thought that tomorrow he will come out with a bunch of criticisms on Tolle did cross my mind when I handed over the DVD to him.

The next day I saw him, but I managed to escape a conversation that I feared will provoke me . After a few days when I went to the canteen I saw him sitting there..this time I just could not leave the place, I had a few people with me. Just when I was about to take my tea and walk to a table, I felt some one gently touching my shoulder. It was him smiling… a full smile this time, not a forced, difficult smile. I stood there all ready to listen what he had to say in a state of eagerness to know about his experience of listening to Tolle and at the same time caught in an apprehensive repulsiveness wondering how I am going to react if he went on a split hair analysis criticism spree. But I was wrong, terribly wrong. He started speaking :

“ I must really thank you for the Tolle videos… thank you very much. He is just amazing…after a long time I found myself listening to some one and it seems to have gone deep into me. You know when I got a PhD I felt that I will be happy , but that happiness did not last for long. When my son was born I felt on top of the world, but soon I found myself falling, When I rose up in my career I felt I am an achiever, but it took me a long time to realize that I won at the cost of distancing many people. When I got a grandchild, I was happy but some how I could not play with my grandchildren…all the attributes I had on myself grew so heavy and crushed me…and now as I grow older every day with my intellect dimming , I began to wonder where I am really heading to. Now you have given me something that will help me emerge out of the gravitating past…I see a meaningful life ahead moving towards peaceful death”

Goodness, he thanked me. Thanks must go to everyone right from Tim Berners-Lee to Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

For a few moments I felt that I have accomplished my task…but that myth was soon debunked when I found that a search on “Eckhart Tolle” on Google-video archive yielded no results. I just could not believe it…I searched again and again…cleared the system cache, restarted the machine and searched, but no search results on any of the over 15 Tolle videos I got some weeks back. I was stunned !

It looks more like Google has accomplished it’s task of touching yet another life in its own inscrutable ways…from a different perspective I feel like rephrasing Kopp’s book title “ If you meet the Buddha on the Road, kill Him” to “If you meet the Buddha on the Road, Hug Him !”

The voice of silence spoke :

Q: Why do you reach out?

A: To get touched !

….and the old saying I read long back came flashing forth :

“ What is not given is lost!”

Now as I read Tolle’s new book “The New Earth “ I feel all the more convinced that we are moving towards an awakening whose glimpses shine forth in almost everything we do. Every technological progress, every act of reaching out has it’s eager counterpart of some one’s life getting transformed somewhere.

A parable I read recently in Paulo Coelho’s latest book “ Like the Flowing River” seems to reinforce that sense of fraternity, a realization that we are all heading towards a common destiny - be it either Awakening or Annihilation, the choice is ours…as Elie Wiesel said “Peace is not God’s gift to mankind, it is our gift to each other” !

Here’s the parable from Coelho:

“ A rabbi gathered together his students and asked them:

‘ How do we know the exact moment when night ends and day begins?’

‘When it is light enough to tell sheep from a dog’ , said one boy.

Another student said : ‘ No when there is light enough to tell an olive tree from a fig tree.’

‘No, that’s is not a good definition either.’

‘Well, what’s the right answer?’ asked the boys.

And the rabbi said:

‘When a stranger approaches, and we think he is our brother, and all conflicts disappear, that is the moment when night ends and the day begins.’

Mind you, this parable comes from the Jewish tradition !

It is time to really look into Samuel P Huntington's theory that states “"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."

It is no more a hypothesis...it is a living theory now , the proof is strewn all around , from the domestic front to the global realms...from the holocaust...through Arab-Isreali conflicts...Combodia...Coratia...thorugh September11...through Iraq...

to where...

the choice is clear !

A Walk Within ...

2006-11-11T14:46:00.000+05:30

Another walk after hectic hours of mad multitasking…had no idea what this walk would bring back . The sky was colourful though the glow was fading out or because the glow was dying out.

Walking on the railway track had always been fun...more so when you walk seeing the luminance afar, trying to balance the swinging backpack that suddenly seemed to have become heavier these days. Soon these walks will become constant remembrances and the backpack will become heavier because there is nothing in that i can throw out...hopefully my shoulders will become stronger !

Sometimes gleamings from the way side do bring in a metaphorical dimension to one’s perception.

The railway track shining with the receding rays of the dusk…the rising cloud with a golden glow between the hills … I felt as if I am circumventing Mount Kailash” as I tread my way towards the beckoning luminance afar. Railway track appeared to be a good metaphor of how our inner firmaments should be….

Nerves of steel
trains of events, thoughts, desires,
loads of memories,
pungent, sweet, fleeting.

Tempered ,remaining in calm repose
ready to take on anything that comes on it -
a little quiver and few sparks of fire ,
receding shrill and dying out afterglow,
and then calm repose.

The next moment you will find it hard to believe that a goods train loaded with crude petrol or a passenger train with hundreds of passengers rolled on it...

Got into Tatha’s den for tea, found him totally lost in trying to light his petromax which , as he said once, is older that his eldest son who is now a grandfather.

He was not quite sure if he will be able to light it this time . Every time he manages to light it must be a joyous plunge into brightness.

He was really breathing life into the old petromax which I thought may not light up this time or just explode seeing the way he was working on the piston.

The first glow….unsteady but bright…..

The next moment, if flared up… and he was unfazed by that…he just tamed the flared up flame...

And then the petromax bulb began to glow…the whole place basked in its glow…his face glowing brighter as if he became the luminance itself !

Research

2006-11-05T14:16:00.000+05:30

Q: Who is your Ph.D guide?

A: Google !

Call me by my true names - A Visual Contemplation

2006-09-03T18:58:00.000+05:30

Every time i feel the dire need to compose myself within I read one of my best loved poems - "Call Me By My True Names" by the Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh. This poem to me is more like a Prayer, a chant that has the panacea for the inner ailments of the present era. This time I read it along with Laxmi, my wife. With her dinner half finished, i saw her remaining transfixed for a few moments... and I saw tear drops falling into her plate. I am sure that this must have been the most nourishing meal she ever had.

Here's that poem. I tried a different way of contemplating on the poem by correlating the deeper meanings with simple graphics which I fervently wish would make the reading experience more intense and help the reader internalise a more vivid visual imprint. Thanks to GettyImages and GoogleImages that brought to me images very close to the ones i had visualised.

Of course the poem does not need any of these...these images are not the flowers to make the poem appear more beautiful, instead it is an offering at the poem's/ poet's altar.

Please call me by my true names

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow-

even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands.

And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open,

the door of compassion.

(Un)Tramp-led Onam

2006-08-29T23:01:00.000+05:30

Sleep Walk ... The life that we dream....The dream that we live...

2006-08-29T18:44:00.000+05:30

Could not sleep well in the train...i asked for an upper berth and got a middle berth instead...and gazing up thats just what i saw , an image that clearly snapped within with deep metaphorical import. Clicked it at once with my W700i and the image was conceived. But i guess it is a poem by Dylan Thomas that delivered it!

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

So, What's there in a name any way !

2006-06-26T23:41:00.000+05:30

pilgrimhawk: 109 placed in TCS, 100 in Wipro in 2 days...all 3rd years

prabal paharia: great news sir ...how is the average package...

pilgrimhawk: hey..Aditi took 5 guys for 35k/pm

prabalpaharia: Aditi - who is she...?

pilgrimhawk: Aditi Technologies !

prabal paharia: oh !

World Environment Day - Is it time for a Reality Check ?

2006-06-04T23:58:00.000+05:30

Ever since we saw the BBC documentary "Global Dimming" we were contemplating on writing on the topic. Today we came up with the first draft of it. Global Dimming theory has brought out some startling revelations that raises fundamental questions on our very survival.

If Carl Sagan's documentary "COSMOS" creates in us a deep sense of awe and wonder of belonging to the universe , the BBC documentary "Global Dimming" makes us apprehensive of the future of our planet. The Chaos theory concept "Butterfly Effect" had been a topic for theoretical exploration so far. In Global Dimming you will find Butterfly Effect in action that throws new vistas of understanding into the intricate pattern that connects. How the opulance of a nation at one end of the globe manifests as the destruction of the lesser fortunate on the other side. Jet trails and factory emissions else where leading to the 1984 Ethiopean famine, a reality that points to still imperious realities in the making if left unattended to.

Click Here for a glimpse into Global Dimming and its implications.

De-Mock-Crazy

2006-05-27T11:44:00.000+05:30

The media space is flodded with news on "Reservation" and the furore it caused.

Student protests culminating in self immolation and starving unto death.

Fraternity divided into 'Majority' and 'Minority' - It is repeating all over again just as Santayana said "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it!"

Found this interesting cartoon in "Outlook" magazine that tells volumes about the current predicament, so simple yet so deep in its metaphorical import.

Here we - 'we the people' sit in the corner and there they reach for the stars.

Am just reminded of 2 songs by Leonard Cohen. I have taken the liberty to mix them and rephrase (with due apologies to the Cohen Estate). The songs "Democracy" and "Who By fire" are infused with such deep passion for humanity as it is with delusion. It is much of a prayer and a rebellious scream as well.

The silence in between is the only time we have for contemplation and action.

So here is the mutated version with the title:

"Who by Democracy Fire"

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.

From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,

Is this Democracy on its way?

And who by fire,
who by water,
who in the sunshine,
who in the night time,
who by high ordeal,
who by common trial,
who in your merry merry month of may,
who by very slow decay
and who shall I say is calling?

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermons
which I don't pretend to understand at all.

It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:

Is this Democracy on its way?

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:

Is this Democracy on its way?

And who in her lonely slip,
who by barbiturate,
who in these realms of love,
who by something blunt,
and who by avalanche,
who by powder,
who for his greed,
who for his hunger,
and who shall I say is calling?

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

Is it coming around to the
cradles of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:

Is this Democracy on its way?

It's coming from the women and the men.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout "Come together"
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:

Is this Democracy on its way?

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:

And who by brave assent,
who by accident,
who in solitude,
who in this mirror,
who by his lady's command,
who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains,
who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?

Tachyons on ORKUT

2006-05-27T00:34:00.000+05:30

Hi,

Just started an ORKUT group called "Tachyons" - On Dr.E C G Sudarshan who is regarded as one of the greatest living Mathematical Phycisits. A celebrated scientist nick nemed "Rishi" at the University of Texas-Austin, Dr.Sudarshan surely deserved a Nobel prize for his pioneering contributions. It is worth knowing how he missed it and how others got it. It is indeed surprising that Sudarshan has not even been elected to the U.S. Academy of Science . Shouldn't we care to bother to ask why?

Here's a List of Relevant Webpages :

1] Sudarshan's letter

2] Elusive recognition

3] Scientists Question Nobel

4] First Runner-upWhen the Nobels are handed out, some get left out.

5] Nobel Doubts

6] Physicist Sudarshan's omission questioned

7] What will it take for a resident Indian to win a Nobel Prize

8] George Sudarshan : Answers.com

9] E C G Sudarshan : WikiPedia

10] Wrong Choice For The Nobel

11] Ranjit Nair on this year’s physics Nobel

12] Nobility of the Nobel prize

13] Scientists petition Nobel Academy

14] Dr.Sudarshan's Home page

15] The Collected Works of ECG Sudarshan

WIth my Grandmother ...

2006-05-23T16:30:00.000+05:30

Met my grandmother. This time she really looked old, she lost much of her interest in watching TV serials. She lost the patience to see Cricket matches too, she even forgot the name of her all time favourite star 'Sachin'.

Dependency must be crippling her spirits. Hope memories do not worsen it.

This time two more things got added to her existence - a new phone next to her bed and a walking stick. She refrained from having both till she could not live without it.

I touched her hand... her skin has now become a saggy flap wrapping her frame, I took her arm feeling the delicacy of lifting a baby and as I did it I could see her painted image on a porcelain plate in the cupboard - a rare honour of the Chinese bestowed on the then aristocratic Indians in Malaysia , she used to tell. I hardly believed it till I saw similar ones in the Mysore Palace.

These hands fed me for 23 years, it is with these same hands she tied a bracelet to my wife when she could hardly move around. Till very recently she used to cook her meals and others too . She keeps repeating “ I am 84 … and why this delay?”.

How easily she befriended the shuddering thought of death!

This time I asked her whether she felt un cared for and she replied : ‘ parents love their kids out of their own selfishness, they must not expect anything in return!”

It seemed like a revelation that rolled into a paradox to me seeing the words as isolated entities : Love – Selfishness - Expect – Return … but together it must make sense this comes from the depth of her being.

Hey..wait a momen,did she not tell in her own words , what Gibran said, without ever even hearing about his works…

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.” ( Khalil Gibran, The Prophet )

Truth sometimes comprises of mutually exclusive, contradictory entities if seen in parts.

… and how I desperately wish to hold her hand and take her for a walk ? To tell her that I owe her much, that she lived a life that was all giving. How I wish I could just tell it all at one go, and I tried it once. But I had to repeat it aloud so many times till I felt like some one who had to repeat “ no mention please “ few times.

Intense moments get mocked by acts made to execute formally.

Any way, I now realize I am late. Those words of Grellet flash forth … from the back flap of the notebooks my grandmother used to cover with brown paper.

I expect to pass through this life but once.
If, therefore there can be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do
for any fellow being let me do it now...
Let me not defer it, or neglect it,
For I shall not pass this way again. ( Stephen Grellet )

She saw me staring at it, a portrait painted during her thirties. She asked me to get it from the shelf and hand it over to her. Her shivering arms all stretched to take it...bridging over 50 years . She held it close to her chest...wiped it with her saree...and told, ‘take my new picture too so that you could keep it beside it’.

Young picture becomes old…and old picture becomes new, sure that must be another way of trying to live ‘in the present moment’ !

Just as I was about to leave, she told 'call me some times'... with a naughty grin she added this too ' you will come this side only when you have some work here'. I know she did not mean it for she knows me as the one who is impulsive and yet affectionate.

I take refuge in that for the time being ! I know she is still annoyed with me for not joining her on the last Onam.

Note: Of late I was reading on "Time Lapse Photography" , found this picture on 'Wikipedia' quite metaphorical of existence at the gross level.

Of a Muse under siege and amused-lamenting Desis - The Kaavya Viswanathan Ordeal

2006-05-13T13:24:00.000+05:30

Bought few magazines at the railway station news stand, and it all had one common entry - the ongoing literary prosecution of "Kaavya Viswanathan". Lifting several passages from some one's work and adding it to one's very first novel at the risk of getting caught seems more like a suicidal act than a conscious act of utter shamelessness. By the time I finished reading all the 'Kaavya' related articles in the magazines, my curiosity mounted to see the plagiarized entries in her novel "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" . All the magazines said that several passages were reproduced verbatim.

Goodness...such thoughtless courage by a 19 year old budding writer studying at Harvard?

I could hardly believe it, thought I will have a good look at the postings on the web as well. As usual searching anything on the web invariably means balancing your discretion with swinging information overload. With scores of blogs, articles and judgments right now on the web ,of which a great majority entertaining scornful attitude I couldn't help asking myself "is blunder a sin?".

More than reading on the issue, i was just eager to see the accused passages from Kaavya's book and I found the very article that broke the news :” Examples of Similar Passages Between Viswanathan's Book and McCafferty's Two Novels”.

I have not read her novel yet, but I felt that none of the manipulated passages ( the word 'verbatim' seems to be a highly exaggerated expression) had such great literary merit and I still wonder why Kaavya went about this way of including it in her novel.

Just have a look at this: ( Accused passages )

‘170 SPECIALTY SHOPS LATER’

From page 237 of McCafferty’s first novel: “Finally, four major department stores and 170 specialty shops later, we were done.”

From page 51 of Viswanathan’s novel: “Five department stores, and 170 specialty shops later, I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys....”

Now...I find it highly unlikely that this is a very conscious reproduction. If one had copied it intentionally then I am sure the number 170 would have been something different unless "170" had some occult significance or it was a major link in the story line.

Now, is this another typical case of "CryptoAmnesia"? . For those who are interested this link might prove useful.

Here's Prof. Michael Hoyt who works as a senior staff psychologist at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, California, and is also a member of the clinical faculty of the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco.

"I´m wondering if I borrowed my three concepts of aesthetics, ethics and effects from Ken Wilber. I don´t know exactly when I read that book of his, but I did read it, at the suggestion of Cloe Madanes. I´m wondering if I´m having what is called cryptoamnesia, which means you picked something and don´t remember where it came from. I surely want to give him credit, if I borrowed it from him. Thank you, Ken! ( Ken Wilber) " More>>

I have come across many passages by accomplished and amateur writers that I secretly wished to have written myself. Some passages left a lasting imprint in my mind and I believe it did influence my thinking and expression. I have noted down interesting passages and statements for the sheer beauty of it and to contemplate on it later and over the time I could remember the exact passages as well. I do not know if this is what Kaavya calls "internalization". So be it or let it be otherwise! But one thing is sure, If I internalize something with such deep sense of appreciation I surely will internalize a part of the psyche of the writer as well who wrote it. In such a case, it is unlikely that one would not think of acknowledging such reproduced expressions ( even with variations) , more so when one goes on to publish the very first work.

Was Kaavya that shameless?, was she so thoughtless or was she so forgetful?

Kaavya "admitted to borrowing a couple of passages from Megan McCafferty's novels 'Sloppy Firsts' and 'Second Helpings' which she had read in high school" and the passages were compared in the Harvard Crimson website. It did not end there, another website goes on to dig out passages from another book that found similar expressions in Kaavya's novel.

Am sure in due course many more accusations might turn up and she can be only at the receiving end. As some one told long back "If all the works of literature were fed into a pattern recognizing super computer, then it will correlate everything written so far". I do not understand why people are so hell bent upon digging out Kaavya's Novel. She admitted her folly and lets leave the girl alone, without forgetting that her next work could really delight us all. Why poke the inflicted wound again and again?

Some Indians in the US lamented that Kaavya brought shame to the whole Indian community. That statement looks as diabolic as stating something like " I am not sincere even when i say I am not!". I have seen quite a few Desi-Americans in my own home town and I found it really hard to believe that they were the ones walking around the country roads here that they stretched all the way their virtual homes there, the only irony being they find it hard to walk the same country roads without their Nike or Reebok even in summer, right on their first visit.

If Kaavya had brought shame to the Indian Community there and they are so hurt by the Kaavya Issue, I guess they should give a little thought about the fact that none of the American reviewers could bring out the plagiarized parts in Kaavya's novel and now I wonder how many the Reviewers and Critics really read the book they reviewed and sure enough most of the people who bought the book must have been guided by their reviews.

Kaavya is stoned enough, now I guess it is time to stone the ones who wrote great reviews on "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life " . One of the publishers said, when asked why they betted so much on Kaavya , "she is young, brilliant and beautiful and so easily marketable..!" .Many have even told that her career as a writer is in peril. Now the point is if Kaavya cannot be trusted, given the fact that she can learn from experience and can re-discover writing as a more soulful activity, then can any of these publishers and reviewers could ever be trusted?

It will be worth while, for those who have time, to dig deep into many other books and conjure up more ‘internalized passages’ and I wonder how many original writers will be discovered in the process. The English speaking world will dig the English works, while I am sure there are many writers who have comfortably lifted stuff from their mother tongues ( In India alone we have over 20 languages in which books are published) and translated/ transcribed into English, most of which perhaps will for ever remain undiscovered.

Is there a branch of Psychology that studies this "internalizing" phenomenon , if there is not one, it is high time modern psychology looked into it.

As for the Kaaya issue, leave her alone. Let her learn from her mistakes and we from our experience.

To all the literary critics and reviewers here is a question:
Sirs, have you really read the book you reviewed? Were were you all till “Harvard Crimson” broke the news?

A question To the new age publishers too :
What do you sell, the author's literary talent or the author's branding looks ?

A question to the Indians in the US who felt Kaavya let them down :
Have you all really cared to think a little about the celebrated Indian Theoretical physicist, Dr. George Sudarshan, University of Texas-Austin who missed out his well deserved Nobel prize to none other than Richard Feynman and Roy J Glauber?...Did they ever bother to find out how this happened?

Seeing the newly released movies ( doesn't matter from which part of India it is) in the cozy confines of multiplex theatres in LA, NY or the likes did this lamenting Indian community ever get thwarted when their American counterparts point out that the song they all swayed to is lifted straight from the works of Kitaro , Nusret Fateh Ali Khan or Billy Vaughn ,what kind of shame does this account for?

I realy wonder how many well published authors around the world will be at ease with themselves. It is time for many to do thorough soul searching.

Sure enough , by now another publisher must have secretly approached Kaavya to sign a deal for her next book...and they must have already figured out the ad campaigns with a bold headline. “The accused young writer stages a great come back with her undisputable original work"... and many out there , here and all around must be waiting for the critics' and reviewer’s weighed comments on this book too.

Just as many suggested that it should be mandatory for all authors to certify that ' it is their original work', it will be more credible if all critics and reviewers added a footnote to their reviews that 'they have reviewed it after reading the book!'.

We live in an era when any idea or information could be “Googled” out. It is such a big boon to have a search engine like google that has literally brought information to our finger tips, while on the other side churning out a research paper or even a Ph.D id not a big deal these days as long as you know how to use the internet effectively and camouflage cunningly. I remember reading some where “ when you want to take a thought you copy, when you want to take an entire idea or work, you plagiarize!” . If one is to really put to scrutiny some of the major proposals and papers written that will clearly show how “googled” out our lives are, how singled out our conscience remains.

Recent issue of “OUTLOOK” magazine lists a few prominent Indian writers charged with plagiarism with a note to the readers “write us about some of the obvious ones we left out”. ( Does that add to the shame the Indian in the US currently lament on? )

People still buy their books, luckily they have written more than one book and on the other side is Kaavya with her very first book under siege. Shouldn’t we be fair enough to this 19 year girl giving her a chance to prove her mettle.

Having faced this much, of one's own doing, at this tender age Kaavya sure must have mustered great deal of grit and grace to get going, provided she gets up fast enough.

Let muse in her be inspired and begin to sing ever new songs with no undertones of the past....and let us stop conspiring - Literally !

Fraternity

2006-04-20T00:04:00.000+05:30

I just love to be with them

Because

None of their acts of care and concern

are well articulated expressions

of assumed responsibility, instead

it is soulful instinct

with none of the kind words and deeds

stored in the log book of emotional accountability.

Fraternity here is not mortgaged selves

within the confines of

unwritten barter deals !

Hawk with his Soul Mate

2006-02-10T11:37:00.000+05:30

Those long lonely years, a terrible sense of forlorness and the desperate attempt to beat both with work,work and more work seems to have been well worth the strife if that has led me to finding my soul mate.

Marital bliss shall never outshine the warmth and support I got from all my close friends. I remain in gratitude to you all.

Loving a person under the same roof is a gentle exercise at opening the flood gates of compassion I guess.

I am just trying to do my home work better.

Hovering around ...

2006-01-13T23:11:00.000+05:30

Opened my blog window after a long time. When the window popped up finally, after a few anxious moments of wondering whether by blog account still exists, i found it hard to leave it empty not because i had something to write. Just did not want to take a chance of losing my blog account just in case today happens to be the last day before my account gets deactivated for not logging in for a long time.

Just got my blog-mortality extended for some more time.

Getting married, an imminent career change, striving hard to give my best to this place before i leave and a whole lot of loose ends to tie up are sure enough reasons for leaving my blog page untouched for a long time and not, as some one told , writer's block. Only writers get blocked thus, when words take a sabbatical only to return enriched and rejuvenated.

In my case i took a break from words , it was no sabbatical because i had not served enough.

Gifted are the ones who just blog and blog and blog.

But i guess what that really matters is making a real gift of a blog. 'Making 'is surely different from the act of 'Creation' i guess from the perspective of soulful involvement.

But then who dares to rephrase 'making love' into 'creating love ' any way?

Limelight Continues to Kill - 2

2005-10-24T10:52:00.000+05:30

Shot these pictures one misty night a week back. To me it was quite a satisfactory experiment at low light photography more so when i wanted to bring out what a fill flash does to a scene that has an ethereal feel in the normal light. This is the second in the series. You can view the first one here.

When the heart smiles ...

2005-10-04T09:00:00.000+05:30

Once upon a time, my child
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes.

I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses— homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
coctailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.

And I have learned, too,
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.

I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you, I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!

So show me, my child,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

( This is an excerpt from the poem "Once Upon a Time" by Gabriel Okara a Nigerian Poet. With due apologies, i have taken the liberty to plug in 2 words ' my child' in place of the word 'son' )

The Rebel and Prayer

2005-09-26T23:29:00.000+05:30

September21:

International Peace Day: Stand up in silence and pray.

I did stand up, but could not pray.

This had been an year of disaster, many have reached out to the ones who lost everything in natural calamity, many have comfortably stayed back too. We have no dearth of theoreticians who dwell in a blissful oblivion of thought experiments and of late I too seem have got swirled into their gravitating pull.

I realized it today.

Standing in silence, with increasing heaviness piling up with, trying to counterpoise myself between the pulling triads of what have i done, what is being done and what needs to be done, i found myself ruminating on these lines from "The Paradox of our Times" by George Carlin:

"These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare..."

One minute over, i asked myself. i failed to pray, but is that significant in any way?...Would it have made much difference. I could have prayed if i really wanted to. But then, one can pray only from the depths of one's being, with intense longing for collective well being. Mere whispering of a chosen prayer like a robot will only add more noise. The fact is that i just did not feel like praying.

In a way, i am glad that I did not stage a prayerful composure.

But i am disturbed. Prayer , after all, can’t do any harm.

There must have been thousands who really prayed whole heartedly all across the globe. Yes, here is this embodied soul in this corner of the universe, occupying a precise geometrical coordinate in space and time who failed to contribute.

In 1981 the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution declaring September 21 as International Day of Peace.

I had to reckon with this imperious reality of being a defaulter with a resolve to actively participate than to passively observe.

Another long walk...that’s what i do when i need to work on myself. Thanks to Deepakji who gave me his copy of 'Sufi Poetry of Hafiz" titled "The Gift". I was flipping through the pages as I walked along...and at one instant I just stood still.

I found my signboard, a passage read:

"Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living
In better conditions...

I should not make any promises right now,
But I know if you
Pray
Somewhere in this world-
Something good will happen! "

I fervently wish this prayerfulness lingers with me unto my last.

I woke up humming the tune of “Losing my Religion” by REM … starting off with my favourite lines :

“ Life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to...

That's me in the corner
That,s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough...

Every whisper
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions....”

Am just reminded of what Deepakji told me , his haiku-like summary of instructions from his yoga teacher at Berkeley:

“Shut Up, Stop it, Sit up!”

How true, for it is the moment of prayer

Rather than working towards peace, i guess much could be done if one could work in peace…and therein resounds and echoes what Khalil Gibran spoke of work :

“Your work is your love made visible”

… Wow, it was worth having the day beginning with REMian delusion that rolled into aftoornoon's disillusion cumlinating in HAFIZian moorings.

( Note to those who noticed a typital syntactical error: I did a queer experiment. A close friend had recently passed a general comment that "don't you think upper case 'I' needs to be abolished except when it features at the beginning of a sentence?". I just tried doing it, just to see what it feels like.Went through every bit of this piece and made all "I" to "i". The moment I got done with it, the first thing I felt was "wow.."I" did it!" and then yes, I realised one more thing...the "I"ness was more fixatedly evident to myself when I started hunting for "I"s which was hardly there when I typed it out first. I guess it is better to follow the rules, and wish some one amends it to "no need for capital letters even in the beginning of the sentance"...wow, then it will be a joy to type out, that to type cast.and when we can hardly do anything about our own "I"ness , why poke into other's "I"ness? But any way with one less capital letter itself it feels good. I am sure with no capital letters it should feel far better.

Strange enough, Ozymandias hails from the very land that invented 'Hieroglyphics'!

Of Soul Searching and Sole Scratching

2005-09-15T23:06:00.000+05:30

A recent comment I received from a “Soul Searcher” who for strange reasons wishes to remain in anonymity pointed out a mutually contradictory element in my blog. You can find it here along with my reply. But why does a self professed ‘soul searcher’ feel inhibited to reveal his identity while airing his critiques. Is soul searching a ‘hide-n-seek’ game? Any way, that’s not the whole point here. I really appreciate people who reveal their identity when they make a comment.

The soul searcher’s mention of mutually contradictory sentences just reminded me of something I read long back in another soul searcher’s well acclaimed autobiography. I dug out the book ,searched out the passage and typed it out. See what you can reckon from it:

“...I was a pure object, doomed par excellence to masochism if only I could have believed in the family play-acting. But no. It perturbed me only on the surface, and the depths remained cold, unjustified. The system horrified me. I developed a hatred of happy swoons, of abandonment, of that caressed and coddled body. I found myself by opposing myself. I plunged into pride and sadism, in other words into generosity, which like avarice or race prejudice, is only the secret balm for healing our inner wounds and which ends by poisoning us. In order to escape the forlornness of creature, I was preparing for myself the most irremediable bourgeois of solitude, that of the creator. This shift is not to be confused with genuine revolt: one rebels against an oppressor and I had only benefactors...“
-The Words: The Autobiography of JEAN-PAUL SARTRE-

Onam2005

2005-09-14T21:03:00.000+05:30

Another Onam came along. The calendar did it's job without fail.

My grandmother must be alone at our ancestral home. Despite all, it is to her I owe my fondest childhood remembrances.

Last time we had a quiet , simple 'onasadya' together. Barely able to walk, she cooked and not just that, she kneaded a clay “onathappan” as well. She did it just because her eldest grandchild came home for onam.

It was just me , her , the TV in between and memories resounding and echoing down the empty corridors .

This time I did not go though I could have…

Wish she takes rest this time.

This Onam pushed me more into a contemplative spell than into a festive mood.

Found this poem of N N Kakkad quite reflective:

Of Facades and Fiascos

2005-09-01T22:17:00.000+05:30

Perhaps one of the worst predicaments a sensitive individual could ever confront is when his reasons struggle to check his tears. Taken aback by the scheming indifference of people he worked with , startled by their shameless penchant to grab an original idea some one else developed, improvise on it, touch on it a bit here and there and turn it in before the public as their creation and then go on to patronize anything that comes out of it, while the one who initiated it sits in a corner unacknowledged all through. He remains silent though he is enraged at the way it was carried out. Bombarded with a question that shot through his being , “How could they do it this way?”, he sat there watching… finding it hard to believe.

He never craved for public attention and he shies away from glorification. But he longs to hear how people have received it all, to hear the criticisms and appreciations and work on to bring in more enriching dimensions. There is nothing like getting the feedback right at the arena of action. He found it difficult to sit through the ordeal of remaining a mute witness of an utterly mismanaged execution of a task all so eagerly looked forward. Inevitable human errors and inclusive human factors, yes he is aware of it and that’s why he expected a more concerned move from them all at a time when they could have corrected it at one point. But, no one paid any heed, everything went on as a soulless ritual rushing towards completion and soon the heroes were in the limelight.

He just got off because he just wanted to avoid any direct confrontation with the people concerned. He reacts fiercely and his expressions so often turn harsh when he is enraged leaving him with the terrible unrest of having hurt the very people he held so close to his being. He just wanted to get away from the scene as early as possible. Walking back alone asking himself ‘is this what they are?”. More than the way he was treated and shunned off , what that hurt him most was their attitude and cool indifference. He found it hard not to let the recent inference nullify the pervious understanding based on many a close interaction. He tried to see things from as many different perspectives in the light of his best understanding of them. But no, he could not reckon with it at all … those acts remained acts of indifference and defience in total contradiction to the way many have understood them. But then he knows that people change and there are many layers to one’s being. How true : “You never step into the same river twice”

His interaction with them is not going to stop here any way. There is lot of work to be done and as usual he rushed back to his office to get going with his new initiatives . Work had always been a great solace to him so far.

Some one said : “The reward of one work done is the confidence to do another”….he added a rejoinder to it.. “to bear further as well!”

He is much relieved because he did not end up devouring them with his angst and wrath, and he walked back assuring himself a sleep undisturbed by nightmares of repentance and aftermath of pouncing on them, their gloomy faces will not haunt him at all. All that he must do is to learn to smile at them with no remorse, and that he is sure of because he will wake up with a few exciting new ideas to incorporate in this new task ahead.

Better to remain aloof and function as a tool than as a participator in the inner circles. Perhaps it will alienate him from many, but sure he will not have to indulge himself in the 'promoting each other' game.

One is not seen any more for his uniqueness and originality, rather one is counted on more as a replaceable entity. You initiate - You innnovate - They improvise and it is all theirs or rather You buy the plot-you build the house - they paint it involving you too - pay you a little extra (the extra money being the price the fixed for the house) and the house is theirs. You do not fight back because they are your neighbours any way.

The best way, he finally figured out , is to not to associate himself to people around beyond the domains of necessary professional interaction.

Thank God, there is enough work to do and new ideas never cease to bubble forth!

Limelight Kills !

2005-08-31T12:24:00.000+05:30

Of (not) Giving and (still) Losing

2005-08-31T11:58:00.000+05:30

When you are made to forsake your most priced possessions, all that you have then is the love you can give and perhaps that is why it is said 'what is not given is lost'.

Can the neon glow outshine our constellations?

2005-08-04T18:44:00.000+05:30

Can't just wait to Get Away !

2005-08-03T15:55:00.000+05:30

Am just waiting to get off for a while and wander. Need a break ! Dried up my rain wet trekking shoes, just need to pack up and go.

I took the first snap few months back, after a rather dull, disturbing day. Just rushed back and threw my shoes to the corner, it bounced back and fell near me. Thats when i saw that little leaf clinging to it. It looked more like a little creature in calm repose.

The second snap happened recently, silently beckoning for me another bout of wandering.

...am just reminded of the song 'Call of The Wild' by Chris Ledoux

Storm clouds are building above the timber line
The lightning’s flashing across the mountain side
The thunder’s rollin’ down the canyons of his mind
Somewhere beyond the great divide.

He hungers for the freedom of an eagle as she flies
Somewhere beyond the great divide

He’s heard the call of the wild
The mountains callin’ to him like a mother calls her child
He’s heard the call of the wild
Livin’ in the city oh it gets to be a grind
Puttin’ in his hours workin’ overtime
Waitin’ for the day he can leave it all behind
To go somewhere beyond the great divide

He’s got to get away from the city for a while
He’s gotta answer the call of the wild.

A Requiem - Dedicated to Jyotsna

2005-07-29T12:50:00.000+05:30

It was a rather unusual evening. Heard the news of your sudden demise or the gradual self effacement with a shudder. It is bearable to get estranged with one’s dear ones as long as we do not lose them to death. The fact that they are doing well without us, that they no longer will worry on us will be consoling enough to live with the loneliness that so often cramps our being.

But then, I have not even seen you and the first time I heard about you was when two people who really mattered to you (Deepak and Shobana) told me about your hospitalization. It was a brief conversation so interlaced with sighs and silence, infused with prayers too. Surely they must have expected a miraculous recovery when they remarked that “She is a brave girl…she is fighting it out…”

That evening, after a long time I had something to pray for.

The little I heard about you left a deep imprint for, such intense was passion to learn here, such deep was your longing to be here in this cradle in the misty foothills, such was your abiding sense of belonging to be with the people who really cared for you…and so you came back after a long break, perhaps despite the impending risks of another bout of illness.

You fell sick again and was rushed to the hospital

You continued to fly
like a bird shot on her wings
…the dusk grew more reddened
as you flew past
and the dawn retained the redness
while the day remained frozen
in anxious anticipation
like a creeper in the corridor
reaching for sunshine.

Shobana called up this afternoon and told “ she passed away ! “

A single bird fallen, shot dead
makes the sky so incomplete…
while the moon and a handful of stars
fill up the entire sky,
with us sandwiched
in between desolate emptiness
and teeming immensity
suspended in blissful oblivion
of the thought that
you are now free from
all the pain and agony.

The moment I set out for a walk I could feel that I am heading towards a different kind of experience because the evening had an eerie yet ethereal mystique about it. It was bright though the sky was completely overcast. It was as if that single large , immaculate white cloud passing by brightened up the glow all the more. The cloud eventually thinned down, spreading out to embrace the whole mountain ranges and this valley – the place that was your home away from home once.

For a few moments the bright white cloud appeared like your departing soul and the whole valley your soulscape.

Many of us bothered
only to hear the first twitters
of your morning song…
and the closing notes
of your swansong.

You looked radiant at dawn,
silenced and subdued at dusk
and what transpired during the day
must have been an unspoken saga
of silent pain and self effacing ways
like the silk worm’s mute agony and distress
while turning
the mulberry leaves it is fed with
into dazzling silk.

You came and went
like a kindered soul
who wandered into our lives
to remind us of the woes
of transient existence
and the joys of belonging,
to teach us more
on aspirations, revolt
rebellion, acceptance and submission…
of life, death and regeneration
and finally
liberation

It drizzled for a while as I walked down the path you traversed just few days back…I stretched my arms ,a handful of shimmering droplets filled up my palm, while a handful of stars filled up the vastness above . I tilted my palm , the stars trickled out as tears from above on the path you walked by the last time.

Soon perhaps I will spot you flitting
across the skies homeward bound;
Many might rustle- a comet is falling
and gaze at it awestruck, assuming
some terrible event is fore shadowed
whereas there traversing galaxies
that will be your winged soul
longing to join us again
like a bright streak of hope, grit and grace
through the veiling dust of the bygone
gyrating in the aftermath’s gravitating swirl
of recurring fears here on earth,
to lead us through
yet another transformation !

A wish List

2005-07-26T01:02:00.000+05:30

Vison free from illusion

Mind free from impurity

Senses free from fetters of habit...

...back to a kid's world!

Of Satisfaction and Contentment - Ettimadai Times...

2005-07-13T23:12:00.000+05:30

Monsoon and the Mindscape

2005-07-08T22:10:00.000+05:30

After a long break I wandered around with my camera...then urge to put my mind's eye vision through the view finder as so intense that i risked shooting in the damp weather. Here's a set of snaps taken recently. I have chosen those pictures that would point to seeing beyond the obvious. I found myself completely at a loss to 'title' these photographs. You are free to do that it will be really great if you could chip in with your impressions.

"You don’t make a photograph just with a camera, you bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved!" - Ansel Adams -

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Of Revolts and Rebellions

2005-07-06T10:56:00.000+05:30

Today’s News headlines read :
“Violence in city leaves scores injured ...Students clash with police, 57 injured across Kerala…..”

The borderline between Reaction and Revolution seems to be very thin for many still. Clenched fists of fury can break anything that comes on its way, even if it is the very edifice built by one’s ideologies.

I am just reminded of what Arundhati Roy wrote in her “God of Small Things” on the red streaks of the green expanses of Kerala.

"Once the Ayemenem office of the Communist Party, where midnight study meetings were held, and pamphlets with rousing lyrics of Marxist Party songs were printed and distributed.

The flag that fluttered on the roof had grown limp and old.

The red had bled away."

Campus politics had been on the waning phase, of course for good, in Kerala. It was quite a welcome change as well. I remember the days seeing my ‘politically enlightened’ peer group, clad in the facade of comradeship, intoxicated with the opium of ideals fighting for causes which only the local MLAs or MPs know of and often ending up being dropouts or some times even drop deads!

The transition from campus political activism to active involvement in academics must have been a major paradigm shift in the educational scenario of Kerala , it must also have been a relieving respite to many concerned parents.

But, today’s news headlines show a reverse trend. Kerala witnessed perhaps the most violent student agitation and violence yesterday, suppressed by the forces in ways they deemed would befit violent agitation.

Professional education, of late seems to have become something that could be shaped to anything by eager education-vendors’ whims and fancies.

Ambitious parents at this end, greedy predators from the private education sector out there and aspiring students, in between, on the cross roads pushing themselves to breaking limits ...oscillating between parent's needs and predator’s greed. Hard earned merit may not mean much in the long run when it comes to securing admission to pursue an engineering programme one truly deserved.

On the fateful day of engineering counseling, few students took to the streets. The veteran comrades sprung into silent action smelling political mileage there too , to use this protest as a front to cover up the fuming power chambers. Student activists summoned and briefed, perhaps they would have got a bit invigorated too with a dip in the spirit that courses through the table tops of the conference rooms.

Protest into revolt and then into rebellion…

To dislodge the ruling party and appalling policies
stones pelted , traffic blocked and classes suspended.

To disperse the mob, shells fired
and ambulances called.

…and yet, the policies remain unchanged!

Another academic year began thus bringing martyrdom for the opposition while the ones on the other side revelled on the fortune amassed.

So many people in protest and nothing was done towards achieving their ideals, Why?…and there had been many like this before.

Is it that the way we protest must change? Rebellion will be confronted head on with oppressive forces, and which side winds depends on the solidarity and the courage of conviction of people involved.

We have had enough of revolts and rebellion, right from pelting stones to hartals to self immolation… the mob-ilised movements seem to have run out of vigour. This event brings to mind 3 poignant episodes of protest suffused with Grit, Grace and Compassion.

Can a single human being make a difference? Can he or she stop the forces of evil dead in their tracks? A courageous young man at Tiananmen Square captured the imagination of the whole world, when he single handedly stopped the advance of a tank column by standing in its way...

This was the forerunner to the downfall of communist regime.

The Vietnamese monk Qang-Duc, protesting religious persecution under the Diem regime, sat quietly in the meditation posture, and took a box of matches and struck one...a whoosh of flame and dark smoke engulfed him, in the rage of flames his shaven head and the orange orbs grizzled...then darkened and amidst this devouring flames and shrills and cries around he remained fixed in meditation.

…and before he set himself ablaze he just said “I protest !”

Yukio Mishima hailed as probably is the best author through whom a Westerner may approach the East, for his life and work provide, in microcosmic fashion, the fascinating link between the Oriental Past and the Occidental Present provided by the whole modern experience of his country.

He was strongly influenced by Buddhist ideals applied through modern psychological conventions to arrive at a vision of life rooted in traditions, yet open to changes. Perhaps he could not bear seeing the “Zen” ambience of Japan drowning in the neon glow . He thought the Japanese nation had lost it’s soul. He hated the way the country was being run by bread-obsessed capitalists and finally found that he couldn't write anything angry enough, so he topped himself. He committed ritual hara-kiri."…he bowed out after leaving a legacy.

Some fish out in troubled waters…some fish out troubling the waters…

...and...“May we leave your generation a world better than the one we were given – Carl Sagan, CONTACT”

Shine On...

2005-07-05T01:50:00.000+05:30

Tears of joy
trickling down
my today's face
smeared with yesterday's grime.

I see you afar
like the rising sun.

But, I can't gaze for long
because the summer sun
might burn me to blindness.

Shine on...into the frozen sea of tranquility,
the moon glow does not blind
it only blindfolds.

Wish it was Nameless Experience

2005-06-29T22:49:00.000+05:30

I appeased my hunger
with a glutton’s rage
and it soon
resulted in indigestion.

My thirst is quenched,
but my throat remains parched
inducing the desire
to drink more, but just cannot
take in even a gulp.

Slept through the day
and woke up into the same phantasmagoria
realizing that
sleep is not a sedative enough.

Remained aloof
yet, detachment stayed elusive.

Walked my lonely way,
but solitude receded farther away
with enticing moves.

Soaring up
with every sudden flights of freedom,
impulsive break away to many around,
I cast a look downwards;
then, dizzied by a vertigo spin
I glide back homeward bound
realizing that
what freedom wants is liberation.

Wish I had not known those words,
then my experience
would have remained nameless
leaving no craving to chisel out expressions
from the frozen lump of the known.

Check list for an adventurous pilgrimage within

2005-06-22T23:04:00.000+05:30

The past few weeks churned me up well. Digging the dirt i realised that the depths i fall into is the distance i want to traverse.So one really never falls into a ditch...one just descends to the heights of ones being. Long walks , ruminations and affirmations did add a lot to my sense of well being, but still there was that faint ,yet powewrful trace of despair that cramped my being intermittently. Usually i do not resort to books during such moments, but this time i felt such an intense urge to read Sheldon B Kopp's "If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him"..i just felt that my psyche needed it...read it all over again, this time at random and one such blind pick led me to that page which gave me a deeper glimpse into the nature of things far clearer than any of my attempts to figure and conjure up the underlying message lurking behind every reality, imperious or otherwise.

I decided to put it on the net hoping that a kindered soul might find it helpful...it might also possibly serve as a sign post to many wandering pilgrims on the information superhighway!

1.This is it!

2.There are no hidden meanings.

3.You can’t get there from here, and besides there is no place else to go.

4.We are already dying , and we will be dead for a long time.

5.Nothing lasts.

6.There is no way of getting all you want.

7.You can’t have anything until you let go of it.

8.You only get to keep what you give away.

9.There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.

10.The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune.

11.You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.

12.It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.

13.You don’t really control anything.

14.You can’t make anyone love you.

15.No one is any stronger or any weaker than any one else.

16.Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable.

17.There are no great men.

18.If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.

19.Everyone lies, cheats, pretends ( yes, you too, and most certainly I myself).

20.All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.

21.All of you is worth something, if you will only own it.

22.Progress is an illusion.

23.Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.

24.Yet, it is necessary to keep struggling toward solution.

25.Childhood is a nightmare.

26.But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-because-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you-grown-up.

27.Each of us is ultimately alone.

28.The most important things, each man must do for himself.

29.Love is not enough, but it sure helps.

30.We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that’s all there is.

31.How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.

32.We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.

33.All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.

34.Yet we are responsible for everything we do.

35.No excuses will be accepted.

36.You can run, but you can’t hide.

37.It is most important to run out of scapegoats.

38.We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.

39.The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.

40.All of the significant battles are waged within the self.

41.You are free to do whatever you like. You need only to face the consequences.

42.What do you know… for sure…any way?

43.Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again…

Quoted from :" If you meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!" by Dr.Sheldon B Kopp

Un-I-fying ...and a Song

2005-06-21T22:09:00.000+05:30

I have no clue of
Where i shall end up
on this path of exploring myself;
i have just begun to realize
that the more i try to live from within
the more vulnerable and sensitive i become
and more fierce
the throngs of pain and loneliness.

Seeing my cherished beliefs
shatter before my eyes,
i know it is going to cost me
my dreams, my desires, prejudice
and the certainty of the known.

What i accept this moment,
i find myself rejecting it
the very next moment.

Trying to 'Unify' the fragments
with the glue of reason
i realize that life is not
quite a jigsaw puzzle...
instead each fragment
a fractal reflecting itself
and the rest.

An attempt to 'unify'
gave way to 'un'-I-fication...

i adore,
i abhor...
and some times my very
saying and doing it.

i am 'un'
and also 'un' of 'un' !

Post script: Scribbled that much sitting in the portico of Tatta's tea shop...and then went blank wondering what to write next. It is then he switched on his radio...and the old Tamil song from the local FM station came coursing through...as if it had a message for me. Gazing at the clouds grazing around the mighty 'elephentanie hill' , watching people moving on the railway platform waiting for the evening train...in sharp contrast with Bombay suburban railway stations in the evening where you see people risk their lives to reach back home on time... seeing 'tatta' lighting the evening lamp before his make shift altar, the song added a mystique dimension to what otherwise would have been just another misty evening:

Here is that Tamil song transliterated:

"Erikkum edatte vittu
illattha idam teedi
engengoo pooyi alayum
Jnana thangamee..."

Roughly translated, it reads:

“Forsaking the place you dwell
You wander amok,
O’ dear effulgent one,
Seeking out the never land ..”

Ramblings

2005-06-21T12:52:00.000+05:30

These are the moments
of awakening
from the self forgetful slumber
in the dark chambers
of self imposed exile.

Reclusive detachment
or repulsive withdrawal
apparently,
to many !

Nightmares shudder you off your bed
so often in your sleep,
then you sleep walk on
the edges of a neon lit phantasmagoria
and in a lightning flash you see the chasms
and realize that you cannot make it back
on your own....

while you glide back..
past the alluring, enticing
cliffs of delirium
you would have otherwise climbed
and perhaps jumped off too.

What saving grace averted it?
Which guardian angel led you by?

You open your eyes look on...
the books on your bed and scattered clothes all around,
the wet towel in the balcony
assures you another day without bath
and you reach out for the deodorant
you threw away yesterday.
You look on as if
a part of you is watching yourself,
take out the writing pad trying to scribble
the thoughts that flashed through last night
only to realize that they were just flashes
that failed ignite the spark.

You dress up and rush
eager to see the progress of
the task you automated last night...
back in your cabin
you take refuge from the cramping loneliness
of your dwelling that often becomes
a time machine as you really try hard,
concentrating ,
to sleep.

You turn on the monitor
and you still look on
trying to conjure up the work schedule
you set yesterday, and trying to read
what you jotted down
and after a few attempts you give up
unable to read your own hand writing.

You realize you are beginning
To learn the fine art
of laughing at yourself.

The monitor with its desk top filled
teleports you into it
while you look into the recycle bin too
to locate the missing file.

You google out your ignorance
dancing to the tunes of
finger taps on the key board...
metamorphosising into
information at your finger tip
with its might potential
to swing around your mood
within the scales of micro seconds.

You open your mail box....
and read with disbelief
of your friend who passed away yesterday
of a massive heart attack,
you click on your favourite
online newspaper website
and your eyes will not miss
those boxed items
set like catchments
of your fancy looking for
the day's new botheration
amidst monotonous concerns
or just a desperate fix.

You walk through the corridors alone
ruminating on
the cool indifference
of the very ones you care for
and the scheming ploys
of your colleagues..
misinterpretations, reinterpretations
justifications...
dead lines and responsibilities....
caught in the quagmire of survival
driven by pain
drawn by longing
torn by despair
lifted by hope..

You move on
mustering enough
zorba's zest,
cretan grit
to wrap up the
mundane strife
and cyber grief.

Yet another day coming to an end
You set out for a long walk
look on and see...
the man on the crutches
running to catch the bus...
they dropout packing his bag
casting a lost lingering look
to start his life anew....
the molested woman
walking away with face upright...
the manic depressive trying his best
to excel at work...
the leper's wound awash with the moonlight
reminding you of
the moon seen through the telescope...

Walking back to your dwelling you realize
that you are walking on a planet
adrift like a grain of sand
in the morning sky
and a few thousands of days left
to live out your desired life span.

Reasons here give way
to subtle correlations merging into
a deeper sense of connectedness.

You stop for a while
perch on that bench...
and you feel the soothing bubbling of compassion
clearing of the murk within...
you get up and say good bye to the stranger
who shared the bench...
the gleam in his eyes...that smile
and a much gentler 'good bye' from him
assures you of the joy of being alive
and staying connected.

You get overtaken all of a sudden
with a deep sense of gratitude
and benediction on your
ability to see…to feel…and the responsive urge
to reach out expressing deeper concerns
towards greater common good.

You walk back...
with a smile
like a dying man who
smiles for no apparently
possible reason at all...

You walk back
ready for anything
with a silent prayer that
you will begin to see
the glimmer of a new growth in
every twist and turn of life
and every sequence of incidents
no matter how fierce
is the conflict between
the security of known misery
and the insecurity of unknown misery.

It all seems like a wonderful
Pastime to renew ,refresh
amuse and liberate myself
through ever new perspectives
of seeing beyond the obvious.

Co(s)mic Dance

2005-06-17T22:34:00.000+05:30

The bright streaks of lightning
break the sky into a jigsaw puzzle
fragmented only in the dark -
fractal immensity
of the undivided whole
in seamless flux
like the swift movements
of a flamenco dancer
dancing to the roaring beats
of my mounting throbs.

Her claps resound and echo
in the empty recesses
of unoccupied chambers within…
Her gasps turn the chill wind
into a warm breeze,
The gleam in her eyes
cast a trail of moon on the rise
to the wake of the dawn,
and the dance floor blazed red
in the after glow
while the dancer gently
moved into the green room of my being
waiting for the next attire
I fabricate out of
what the day brings along!

Peter’s principle with an example

2005-06-16T06:20:00.000+05:30

Overheard:

X : Her internet connection should be taken off !

Y : Why?

X: She seems to have time only for checking her mails during office hours resulting in total negligence at work.

Y: Well, if she looks out through her window watching a train passing by, will you go and stop the train?

Fence across Forever?

2005-06-15T04:08:00.000+05:30

A fencing game of relationships
on the bridge across forever ?

Summing Up

2005-06-15T03:31:00.000+05:30

When miles seem to shrink down
at every eager finger tap on the key board,
When 0s and 1s
dart across the emptiness
of the super-conducting-super-collider tunnel
engulfing the information super highway
When collisions , deletions and materialization
of myriads of thoughts and emotions
pass through the logic gates
of man-machine mother board's programmed free will...
this separation now seems
like a wild amusement
and effacing misconceptions
seem like a childlike attunement,
and agony the silent joy.
Loneliness that casts her
forlorn dark shadow
on white patches of time
loomed up with stretching space
now seem to have built
a canopy of shade
against blistering heat waves
of infidel thoughts and recurring fears.

The opacity of the unknown
has now become a prism
generating perspectives of many hues.
Vagabonds of experiences
that once strayed into my arms,
then got shaped into memories
of fond remembrances and futile forgetfulness
of imperious realities
are now getting metamorphosised
in the dark womb of desire
into cloned-luminous dreams.
Remorse that once yelled at woes
sprung from the gorge of self deception
have now become silent prayers
resounding in the altar of acceptance
blowing into life
the faint, flickering amber of hope.
Things have changed,
transformed and transmuted
far beyond the expected patterns
of all calculated moves.

Even those flashes of insights
and streaks of inspiration
that came in a gush
seem to have dripped out
much like the spent out glow
of the glowworm that perched
on this hand for a while
and then flew away
becoming just another fly
in the alarming heights
of swarming thoughts. How true...
half of what is seen
is not understood,
much of what is understood
is not told,
More of what is told
got obliterated of it's import
adulterated with words
for high impact.

The rest....
the rest surface
like murk in the offering
before the deity of grace unbound,
and the very playful swindler
of many a turn around.
So be it!

Is clear vision more perceptive
of sun's red spots
than myopic vision?
Will blindness ever get perturbed
at the bulb’s dimming brightness in
voltage fluctuations?
..and does the unseen cease to exist
any more than the seen, yet unperceived?
Seeking out answers
for seemingly endless questions
is much like trying to discern beforehand
which seed will germinate
among the millions sown
on an unfamiliar terrain.

...Just leave it!

But that really doesn't matter much
for, now there is a feeling that
was not quite there before,
that things will get better and better
no matter how much gets transmuted
or how much lies unperceived
no matter how less i cherish
or what all will eventually perish,
no matter how much i forget. falter and fall
or how often i regret,
no matter what public opinion is
or what heaven's decree will be
no matter what not..
this sickening forlornness
too will fade away into
another awareness suspended
in blissful oblivion!

A speck of moon
and those handful of stars
will fill up my entire sky.
yes, how reassuring is the consolation that
I am alive and so does the rest of the world too !
So much of noise, a little voice
silence , and missing notes
will make my music complete,
my seraphic symphony!

Inside Out? - Her first teaching on photography !

2005-06-14T13:40:00.000+05:30

The one snap you see on the right was the one i liked the most even after I got the one on the left she sent me. It was quite a joy to see her so excited about the snap of mine she took, I have never seen her so happy about some thing she did except for climbing hills alone and staring at the oglers back till they got mortified.

Yes, though she is the one who used to see immensely more in my photography than i myself could see,I have never seen her much with a camera. But that day ,the way she took the snap really intrigues me still. She was quite fast in her moves...and had to look through the view finder just to focus and not to frame...and the way she leaned back on the chair to take the picture... it all made me think that it is going to be while a for her before she is really going to click.

But then, she clicked quite unexpectedly ! I never heard of that snap till yesterday when she called me up and told "See the way i have captured you!"...she sent me the snap. In turn i had sent her one on my blog "Self portrait" and she wrote back :

"see my skill…
I’ve captured u inside out.

the other snap- u look like the stone boy....hehehe
good try
but that’s not u!

what i took is the real u
u were not facing the camera n your head was tilted down
n there was sunset lighting n all the fruits in the back
n u look oblivious to everything!

...absorbed? in what??"

She just did not take the snap, she rather really made it , just as her mind's eye saw.

...What she did , to me, is quite reminiscent of these words of Ansel Adams : "You don’t make a photograph just with a camera, you bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved!"

Wish some day I too could explain a portrait thus!

Yes, it is said that "a picture is worth a thousand words!". True, but the point is to SEE those thousand words before one really clicks.

Bootstrap Views

2005-06-13T23:21:00.000+05:30

Dear anonymous guiding spirit, wish you reveal your identity. I owe a lot to you for my current sense of well being because you did add a lot to my recent contemplations.

That was for the 'anonymous' who had been replying to some of my blogs. I have found this anonymous's remarks really helpful, and his/ her recent comments on my blog "The Empirical and Experiential" had real depth to it. I had a few things to tell on that and when i wrote it all down i thought, why not post it as another blog.

You had asked>>>

1) When we despise their intellectual masturbation, are we truly reminded of our intellectual impotency?

First, there is no despising THEM. Whenever I write I am very much there , i too am a part of the whole. Yes, i feel that as long as we crave to be Omnipotent ( the ' theory of everything' approach) there will always be the recurring delusion of being intellectually impotent.

2)"While insight went abegging for proofs."
Was it really the insight that went abegging for proofs? Does true insight have to beg for proofs?

My friend, blogs are spontaneous expressions of what is seen and perceived at a specific instant. blogs are not sermons or treatises. Sure, awareness will get enriched...past inferences could give way to new understanding. The particular blog in context is a quick reflection on the conflicts i experienced then. Despite leveling arguments against arguments, sometimes contradicting myself internally....logically building points after points with apparently a cool front while trying to stabilise my mounting heartbeats, i could then see in myself an innate urge to outsmart the other person...despite knowing that certain convictions based on personal experiences are ineffable, i was trying to bring it all within a conceptual framework. You are right I feel - 'True insight need not go abegging for proofs' ...but the truth is that my not-so-true insight did because the whole discussion had egocentric-emotional undercurrents.

There is one insight i gained from that, for which the very episode depicted would suffice as a proof. Then...is that insight true insight?....don't know my friend. All that i know is this- Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree.

3) A smile...........
Beautiful... But do we have to really limit the scope of that 'explanation'? Who knows perhaps, science may embrace the spirit and physical, the metaphysical someday, in quest for an even more deeper understanding of the truth?

Deeper understanding of truth , as a derivable equation..?...then is that the end of Mathematics and Physics?? Science is Science and Spirituality is Spirituality. Yes, there could be an awareness intensity resulting from the blend of both....a deep reverence for the immensity and profundity of creation...the universe within and around. Won't the child be well groomed if mother remains herself and father remains himself, the child needs both! I feel, thought and reason could comprehend the material phenomena wrapped up in space-time flux...and experiencing the metaphysical through the empirically verifiable...i find it mutually exclusive. Yes, Science assumes a much deeper dimension in its spirit of enquiry if motivated by deep sense of awe and wonder resulting in reverence for life...perhaps this is what Einstein meant when he told : "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science" ....and during his later years, when questioned about the 'spiritual experience' of a scientist, he answered " A scientist's spiritual experience takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural laws that reveal an intelligence of such superiority in the light of which all our systematic thinking and acting seems to be an utterly insignificant reflection".

Did Einstein speak like a Scientist or a Mystic or both??...am just reminded of something that Bertrand Russell told " Mysticism begins where logic ends". The 'Koans' in Zen Buddhism is rooted in that conviction.

This was the lurking spirit behind that part of the blog.

Here's little poem by Nikos Kazanzakis (Last Temptation of Christ)

" I asked the almond tree-Sister speak to me of God...
and the almond tree blossomed !"

...and these lines from REM's ' Out of TIme' :

'Oh no I've said too much
I set it up
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough....
Every whisper
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions...'

A Self Portrait

2005-06-10T23:03:00.000+05:30

(Tried out a multiple exposure experiment on myself some time back , seems as if it has become a metaphorical depiction of my tormented being now)

"You win a while, and then it's done -
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With my invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it's real.

You are turning tricks, I'm getting fixed,
I'm back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip, and then you slip
Into the Masterpiece.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep:
You ditch it all to stay alive.

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go.

I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
I made it to the forward deck
I blessed our remnant fleet -
And then consented to be wrecked.

I guess they won't exchange the gifts
That you were meant to keep.
And quiet is the thought of you
The file on you complete.

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat...!"

[A slightly altered version ( with due apologies) of Leonard Cohen's song 'A Thousand Kisses Deep']

The Emperical and Experiential

2005-06-08T11:38:00.000+05:30

Blackholes and wormholes…
Time travel and quantum teleportation…

A dull evening with nothing much to do
triggered off a discussion
and arguments followed;
Ego levels raised,
Ignorance levels displayed.

Intellectual masturbation
craving for spiritual satiation
through emotional outbursts.

Brilliance in combat with insight
while insight went abegging for proofs.

Scientific arguments strayed
into poetic ramblings;
Theoretical possibilities packed into equations
with multitudes of unknown variables
criss-crossed their path with
experiential absolutes
wrapped into personal realities
stretching beyond the framework of
mathematical models and verbal expressions
and all plausible intellectual expositions.

The empirically verifiable and the experientially cognizable need not mutually supplement each other but perhaps could add up to a new dimension opening up new perspectives towards a more meaningful existence.

A smile just seen could give
an explanation of the mechanism
of muscles stretching the lips;
while the smile understood
could be the very pathway
into the other’s psyche or
it could even be the very pathway
to freedom from the known.

The Buddha smiled thus once,
and many more Buddhas laughed;
the secret of the golden flower
is in every bud abloom.

We walked together…
the interludes of silence
stabilized the mounting heartbeats.

A poem to surmise
and a few reasons to summarize
signing a silent pact
of not having to lose
as long as the other does not want to win.

We parted our ways
Learning yet another lesson
of arguments often turning into
after-convincing reckonings.

What an evening!...
I just cannot wait
to embrace what tomorrow
brings along.

Celebrating Seraphic Desolation

2005-06-05T16:02:00.000+05:30

What an evening!

I just wanted to get away from my cabin that very moment and go for a long…long walk. There was such gravitating heaviness deep within , that’s what I always do when I need to work on myself – Walk , till I am unable to think the same thoughts again , till I begin to see new glimmers of growth where despair cramped once.

Myriads of thoughts swarming my mind, over taken and often overpowered by a gush of memories, storming grief , dreams in flight and unspoken concerns…, walking has always helped me to calm down myself during the darkest moments of despair.

Like a huge boulder with sharp edges rolling amok down the far stretching slopes of a mountain, I walk along , and coming to rest at the valley after the rough edges have been smoothened out…ah!..then it is like a pillow I lay myself to repose on in a suspended awareness of blissful oblivion.

I was heading for such an evening when I set out. I dropped in at the little tea shop near the village railway station for the customary tea and an evening fag. I had little patience to finish either of it…just wanted to get going, walking!

I knew I was heading for such an evening, such were the turn of events during the last few days. Those were real days of confronting myself and treading through the darkest recesses of my being. A roller coaster ride within as well!

She left this evening…wish she comes back, there is immensely more to learn from her…there is much I have to give her as well. Wish to hear more of her laughter, wish to be a bin she could pour out her woes yet remain elusive too!

How well she tolerated it all…my over indulgence being overtly concerned. My outbursts failing to see things as they are, until she too reached the breaking point of seeing myself thus. Sure enough, my behavior must have debunked the larger than life dimension she saw me projected on so far…and she had her way of dealing with me from then on which revealed those facets of hers I would have never seen otherwise. My oddities do pay off well some times.

Over an year of getting to know her and the last few months interacting, I saw in her great potential to become a well strung professional and every interaction soon became a learning experience. She is quite an exemplification how simple and straight forward one could be, yet how gentle and strong as well. How well, though I was read terribly wrong of my acts of concern, she kept me at bay… showed me my assumed distance giving no room for any slip. Incredible…I felt devastated for quite some time utterly at a loss to explain myself, but then that feeling of helplessness and forlornness soon gave way to deep reverence for the individual she is, a woman of sum and substance.

In the last few days she taught me quite a bit… she showed me the difference between being sentimental and being sensitive, how one could be content with the bare minimum of material well being, how to tolerate and how to react. Amazing, lessons that I failed to learn in 3 decades came along into my being and could easily help me grow in just 3 days. Such is the masterly touch with which she conducted herself, with real grit and grace.

I wish and pray that I do justice to what I learnt. But still, the big question remains…why is that there is no one to show forth their care and concern to me. Why is that I feel so utterly forlorn. Perhaps my generally cheerful disposition makes every one take it for granted that joy is my nature , joking my habit and reaching out my weakness. I do not know what I am seen as and I am no more bothered about it, this recently acquired courage of conviction will help me continue to remain thus.

Sitting and sipping the tea, then gulping it down to get on to my walking spree one by one the bygone began to appear like a snap shot-flash back show. Never can I forget that day when I exploded in a rage for a seemingly insignificant reason .She stood there silent, intimidated and frozen…mortified! When I calmed down after a few moments all I could see her as was like a little Jewish kid in the ghetto standing before a Nazi soldier. I explained myself… seeing the way she remained silent…looking at me with fear. I broke down…I wept silently and it took me quite some time to compose myself.

That was her first lesson in silence… she taught me what I should never be, to any one.

It did not take me much time to err again…this time it was a childish sense of being treated indifferently and I told it out as well knowing that I would be wrong in my assumptions, but I wanted to air out my angst. She became furious, yet she contained it so well. But she asked me with a penetrating look “ how could you think so mean?”. That was like a bolt from the blue. Few days before I saw her as a timid little lamb, now she appeared like a ferocious lioness. How true “Smitten on the head, the cobra rises its hood; stricken to the heart, the Lion gives out the mightiest roar…….”

She had stirred me enough to go on a pilgrimage within any way! I had to really look into myself.

The next few days she dealt with me so well that it had such a healing effect on me later. I felt shunned and distanced…doubted and scorned as well. It is bound to be so I guess when we see many plotting every moves for calculated returns. But I was not that to her. Right from the very first day of meeting her and during the course of interacting and getting to know her…her hardships..ambitions…fears…I had nurtured deep affection towards her that had absolutely nothing sensual about it…it was tender affection, a feeling that I must be there to help her..and helping her was a sheer joy. I was just trying to bring in some happiness into her otherwise dungeon like existence. I felt honored when she used to pour out her woes, of course in much restrained measures. I find it amazing to see her moving around like a kid, despite the fact that she had reasons enough to feel despondent on many things. Getting her medicine…few books and music was a real joy…I felt that would bring in some element of joy during the times of utter despair. All that I expected , all through, was to see her happy…considering every act of giving as the only opportunity I have to reach out thus. Perhaps it is my way of going and asking people “hey…this is good...i think you need it...can I do this for you?”…that made many and this time her too wonder why am I so eager to help and doing things without even being asked for. True, some times unasked for concern and help turns out to be an act of over indulgence. But then, I never wanted any one to feel obliged to me , and I had always thought it is best done when you reach out with help before it is asked for.

There is one scene from the movie “Gandhi” by Richard Attenborough that would perhaps visually convey what my verbal expressions fail to. There is this sequence lasting hardly a few seconds....Gandhi sits down by a stream to wash the only piece of cloth that covered his bust…he lays the white cloth on the stream…ripples coursing through the cloth afloat….and he holds one end not to let it flow away. He looks to his side…a few yards away he sees a woman with a kid, shivering in the chill breeze…he just let go of the cloth and it floats away to her. Gandhi just gets up, smiles and leaves…silently…without even looking back.

That, to me is real giving…exemplifying the saying “What is not given is lost!”

I felt I owed her some explanations for my outbursts, and I wanted to open up myself the best way I had understood myself. Sure, much of my behaviour and the recurring sense of emotional insecurity has its deep roots in my childhood experiences. I opened up and it did not take me much time to realize that I am beginning to see in her as an integral part of my being because I could really feel the seraphic touch of her presence and I told her that as well knowing very well that integral elements need not be indispensable entities. I do speak out the undercurrents of my thoughts to the ones I revere because it helps them understand me without attributes and more over it helps me understand others too based on what they speak about themselves.

Sure, one can see the other only based on one’s experiences and perceptions and I am no exception to be seen otherwise. I felt as if every act of reaching out and every communication of mine was seen as deliberate attempts to woo her, to win over. The assumed toughness in her expressions, the deliberate acts of deriding me away, sharp remarks and cool indifference soon drowned me in despair…I knew that the unspoken me will never be understood . Every act of hers, and every word of hers soon appeared to me deliberate expressions that seems to yell at me : “you do not mean anything, and I am smarter and more sensible than you think I am !”.I am only happy to see her thus... because this is the toughness and courage that is needed to get going.

All I could do was to be silent…finding it hard not to reach out every time I felt the promptings to. I did not wanted to barge into her existence…found immense release when I managed to pen down my woes…I do not know how poetic it is, but I know how truthful it is…:

Glimmers from the Wayside
-------------------------

Just as I wish to understand,
I wanted to be understood too.

Just as I cared,
I longed to be cared too.

I too wished to know
That I am not all alone
and realized that expectation
Is the alienating factor.

I could never get into your mind
and see myself as how you looked at me,
All I could do was to be my true self.

I react and retort
mostly at the spur of the moment;
but i am sure it is far better
that talking sweet nothings
in seemingly innocent whipers.

I wanted to believe more of what you speak
about yourself than what I assume on you.

I opened up because I could be understood as I am,
not what I seem to be.

I agree I have erred, but I am not an error embellished
Yes, I have hurt too…but I am not hatred personified.

All I could do after a terrible fall
after a burst out
was to pull myself together...get up and walk again…
And this time I am going climb many a peak
because I am learning to walk barefoot.

Yes…weird thoughts crossed my mind…
And I let out all of it, because I could not contain…
because I could not smile when I felt hurt.

You asked “how could you think so mean?”

True, thinking mean is despicable
but hiding them, my friend,
...is far more deceptive.

I am not a cool surfaced one
Plotting silent acts of defiance.

But how about the ones hiding good thoughts,
when it could redefine the other’s life positively,
and later use it as a double edged weapon?
… and how about the ones
Who in a friendly touch
finds the satiation of lusty grabs??

I am glad ,
I am not that!

In work let me forget my grief ,
transforming every jolt of pain
into a triumphant laugh.

I shall be content seeing you happy
from the distance you have kept me at.

In this silk worm’s existence
woes are the mulberry leaves I am fed with!

So be it,
Life will go on…
My presence will not
Make you transfixed any more
For, I am here not to destroy,
But to fulfill…
perhaps leaving a legacy
as a legend
who never really lived
but also as the one
who never choose to wear a facade
every waking hour.
…who never talked a song
or walked a dance
to the seraphic symphony
wrought with much noise, a little voice
silence , and missing notes.

I sent it to her, but I never got a reply!

… and she left today on a short vacation, leaving such an emptiness of uncommunicated fullness.

I had gulped down the tea…and got up to leave and it is then I saw him beside me. In fact I had always avoided long conversations with him because his esoteric blabbers used to drive me to my wits end knowing very well that he is the one who leads such a weary life under psychiatric counseling and medication. As I said ‘bye’ to him… he gave such a longing look and told “Please sit with me for some time..please…I need your company”…he had such a pleading tone of helplessness. I decided not to go for a walk…and sat down…kept my shoulder pack down….and that was the moment…i felt the heaviness within just began to melt away...I sat opposite to him I felt all my heaviness melting away. He began to speak…all ramblings and laments…I listened to it all holding his hand…after he got done with his outpour he told me “now you go…enjoy your walk…I feel much better now!”

I did not go for a walk, I came straight in and started writing this.

The emptiness she left was in turn filled by his relief of having let go of his pent up perturbations and he created a vent for that release by asking me to sit down and listen to him. I could feel the change deep within…I was totally overtaken by a deep sense of compassion… love and reverence to all…I felt like hugging and kissing every one…I could clearly see the child in every one…as if nothing mattered. It was as if the pangs of misunderstanding, loneliness, helplessness and hit me so hard that it opened a little flood gate of compassion deep within... a brief glimpse into our true nature at a much subtler level. Wish such moments recur again…and to live it out I am prepared to go through any hardship...wish I could see with unfailing vividness the esential humanness and latent divinity in every one.

The way she treated me of late was quite a taming process of my ego that gave me a much deeper understanding of myself and others , her conducting herself thus was also a glimpse into a womanhood of grit and grace.

She proved it so well, that 'to live like an angel in this world you need to wear the armors of a warrior.'

His reaching out to help himself was another lesson of being not ashamed to ask for help, the way he left smiling was also a display of how well one could end up accepting oneself if you include others too.

It doesn’t matter any more what way I am looked at…how misinterpreted and misunderstood I remain…it does not matter who disowns me…or of what renown I get elevated to, I feel now convinced that at the edge of despair I will stumble upon a new meaning to my existence…Just like the way she taught me a few lessons in detachment, just like the way he taught me a lesson in reaching out to help oneself…some day some one will teach me a few more lessons on things I have not even thought of.

Dusk assumed the serenity of dawn all of a sudden, retaining its afterglow!

Here is that complete verse from Dhammapada : "Smitten on the head, the cobra rises its hood; stricken to the heart, the Lion gives out his mightiest roar ... and the glory of the soul comes forth when one is wounded to the depths!"

Altarless Churches and Waterless Fountains

2005-06-02T00:55:00.000+05:30

Today a casual call to my friend Aparna soon turned into a probing concern. I was asking her about her recent visit to Mumbai and her narration soon assumed a tone of disappointment as if her visit to Mumbai was incomplete this time. It is, because she missed the joy of plunging into the ocean of books in the Chruchgate and Fountain areas of Mumbai. I too was a bit taken aback when I heard that and soon I was caught up with the thought that there is nothing much to look for in Mumbai on my next visit. It was just over 2 months ago I had been there and spent an entire afternoon cruising through the book lanes and I am going to see them empty next time, like an erstwhile river with no water now!

All their attempts to give Mumbai a face lift seem to only tarnish the image she acquired over the years. I have always found Mumbai as an infinitely compassionate mother with a heart to accept every one. The mighty and the meek eat from the same way side junk food corner, travel inhaling each other’s sweat in the suburban trains, wear similar looking outfits- one could be the expensive designer wear and the other could be its exact replica from fashion street, I have found Mumbai much safer to travel at odd hours, I have seen girls traveling alone at 2 am as well - something I could not imagine even in my home town.

The gushing forth, the rushing back and the ‘ chill out’ outlook of Mumbaikars is quite a celebration of life- a good blend of the struggle for survival and the joy of existence.

But a few things that add to the dimensions of existence seem to be fast vanishing.

It was when I was there last time a big furor on closing down the dance bars stirred up the whole place. Those who dance for a living are stamped being whores, but the ones who go places with their ‘ casting couch’ magic are seen as dignified dames! Dance bars removed- the end result thousands of women became jobless over night, and now they will be forced into a trade they perhaps they dreaded and stayed away from so far. Sheer helplessness could push them into becoming puppets in the rituals of the dark.

Is Mumbai becoming sensually malnourished?

Now, all the pavement booksellers driven off , the footpath must have become much wider to walk along and the joy of walking around much narrower. It was sheer joy walking around looking for books, finding books I thought I will never be able to get. It was also getting to know people better, learning to negotiate better too [ :-) ] . Fixing an affordable deal with the bookseller was also striking a friendship too and I am amazed at their knowledge of authors and books, may a time it is they who introduced me to a new author or a book. Unlike other places where they see the thickness and glossiness of the book to fix the price, these booksellers on pavements they read your eagerness and excitement in your eyes and moves, as you browse through the book, the difference is that others know the weight of the book and they know the value of the book.

Looking around for books was also an exercise at getting to know at a more subtler level, the intricate pattern that connects. There had been many instances when I stumbled on a book I was desperately looking for a long time, that too after I had given up searching for long time. The writers who long to read seem to be led to your eager hands, a respite for them too from the dust and hear and humdrum.

Now that joy too is not meant to be.

Mumbai seems to be getting intellectually malnourished too!

Intellectual and sensual malnourishment would eventually lead to emotional derailment, while the Temples and Churches and Dargas and what not will stand as a mute witness and continue to thrive in the spiritual malnourishment that is the eventual follow up.

Am just reminded of these words from “The Paradox of our Time” written by a school kid :

“ The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings,
but shorter tempers;
wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner space.
It is a time when there is much in the show window
and nothing in the stockroom.
These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare;
more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.
We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.!”

Moral Malnutrition

2005-05-26T20:28:00.000+05:30

In this arid zone,they make a living selling vegetables. Perhaps they are the only vendors you will find on the platform of this little village railway station where just 4 trains stop for less than a minute. Hearing the bell ringing,they line up...from little girls to old women each with a handful or some with a basketful of vegetables, and as the train slows down by the platform they run and hand it over to eager hands stretching out, like a relay race.

Some of them have their loyal regular customers and some need to find their daily bread donors.No bargains here because it is the cheapest deal one could ever get. Often i have seen them chasing the withdrawn hands from the train window clutching a bunch of beans or a few tomatos, shouting to throw the money on the platform... one could see the coins tossing off the platform...and some times they run till the edge of the platform and walk back bare handed with gloom strewn faces.

This time I saw something different...a middle aged man bargaining...and the girl negotiating...the green signal given and the train begins to move...she walks...and increases her pace...and then he clutched the vegetables with one hand and with the other hand he grabbed her breasts.The deal doesn't end there...he has't yet paid for the vegetables....she keeps running..and the man appears at the door and throws a currency note on the platform...the girl picks it up, walks on and slips it into her blouse while repositioning her displaced bra.

Hope those vegetables nourish yet another malnourished soul while I am sure to be a mute witness to more episodes of this, remaining a blackhole at heart.

Am just reminded of a Malayalam couplet Dr. Ayyappa Panicker :

" Ara vayar pattini kidakkunna ayaletthe penninu
muzhu vayar kodukkunna maanyarallo nammal!"

Roughly translated it reads:

"We are the gentlemen bequeathing a full belly
to the starving girl in the neighbourhood"

Freedom from the Known

2005-05-26T12:39:00.000+05:30

Just couldn't help passing on something remarkable I read recently on Sant Kabir.

I have been reading the Bijaks of kabir for quite some time and the more i read the more inrigued i got all the time. Kabir's words stand out for its utter simplicity and direct insight into the nature of things, but his iconoclastic expressions have always made me wonder why was he so hell bent on shattring and debunking the common man's belief system and throw him into utter darkness...I have always asked myself 'What spritual solace does Kabir's bijaks give to the distraught and the disillusioned when he systematically denounces every system of belief and practice?'... Kabir remained a sort of an enigmatic paradox until i came across this beautiful passage that speaks a lot about the unspoken kabir:

"Kabir is going to take you- if you want to hear his word- to a place of no help, no hope, no solace. He refers to the delusional nature of hope, which is hope for something, some security against the nothingness we fear. This hope must be jettisoned. He exposes the silly ways in which we comfort ourselves, showing a comic strip of animals mimicking our little drama of marriage and domestic flurry. He leads us to a place where there will be nothing under our feet, and invites us to leap off!"

From Linda Hess's introduction to "The Bijak of Kabir' published by Oxford University press

...and it so well connects to what kazantzakis wrote in "The last temptation of Christ" :

"Man's wings won't sprout until he reaches the brink of an abyss!"

Of Outbursts , its Aftermath and Understanding

2005-05-26T10:14:00.000+05:30

This joy of existence- Kundera called it “the unbearable lightness of being”….Khalil Gibran isolated a principal part of it and called it “The pain of too much of tenderness”. Sure, they must have experienced a much intense level of joy and its accompanying perplexities I am experiencing right now after a grueling phase of sleepless nights, fierce unrest within and conflicting thoughts stretching my inner firmaments to breaking limits.

But it did not break and I did not break loose as well !

It seems that I am yet to figure out a great deal of myself even at the gross level. Perhaps it is the inherent emotional insecurity rooted in a rather tumultuous childhood, which still appears me as a quagmire like reality now, that invariably pushes my emotions to extreme limits, triggering off darts of thoughts in all directions and it doesn’t take much time for me to see myself lying bruised on a bed of thorns- every thought neatly levelled after they settle back to ground realities.

That is a terrible feeling and treading on that course , with no clue of what the other person has to say about it all, is heading towards an emotional suicide- the death knell of impending possibilities for a harmonious relationship… and it is too precious a thing to be lost simply due to my inability to understand and comprehend.

From debasement, now, there is only on way out- the way up!... and to float up one needs to shed the load of prejudiced convictions and inhibitions to open up … to spell out one’s discontent, fears, concerns with no shyness or qualms. After all there is no other go now because all my calculated attempts to understand based on inferences have miserably failed.

How true, true understanding comes from open communication than from measured expressions.

All that I could do was to tell about my perceptions and initiate myself to see the other person’s perspective too. There is lot more to reality than what is seen as the most obvious at the rational level and there is lot more to understanding a person based on the immediate expressions and explanations. I feel once the basic human factor ( vulnerability, impulsiveness and of course the ability to over come them too) is honored , then getting to know the other person becomes an adventurous pilgrimage. A totally new reality could spring from a hitherto unknown dimension and there one begins to see things anew, I guess.

Some one rightly said “You never step into the same river twice!”

The thought of being doubted and despised by the very people you hold so close to your being could turn out to a paralyzing experience. You cannot react fiercely because you do not what to hurt them, yet you are enraged at them…perhaps you even regret and repent on the bygone expressions and you no longer feel that you are immensely more that the sum and substance of your expressions.

But then, it is a self induced suffering…not quite different from licking ones wounds and making it all the more sore.

Some of my very close friends have always told me to loosen up a bit on a few things, especially when it comes to spontaneous reactions. I feel any attempt to restrain myself will only adulterate all my interactions to follow, but then I know that what is intended is to let go off the tendency to see things only from a rational perspective…to much reasoning and analysis, though it might have exacting conformity to the known, will only complicate and distort the reality I guess.

As long as you stare, you won’t see!

All that I need to do was the let the other person speak for herself… and that made all the difference. What I considered as terrible outburst was just a natural expression for her and what struck me the most was the childlike abandon, yet with devout involvement, with which she narrated the whole scenario and explained her perspective. To see events and expressions through the eyes of a child without sidelining ones primary identity as an individual is something that requires total simplicity and above all belief in the essential goodness latent in every one. She quite exemplified it, like a quiet and concerned mentor.

Pushing myself to the edge of delusion and then leaping off from there with newly sprout wings demanded shedding loads of gravitating past as well…at least for the time being…and this new understanding now assumes the feel of unbearable lightness for the mind that is so habituated to load balancing….but the difference then was that I was just crawling- loathing and lamenting and now I have begun to fly…and wish I could fly high so that I could see the farthest reaches of the expanses of mindscapes- mine and others as well.

Kazantzakis said it so well- “ Man’s wings won’t sprout until he reaches the brink of an abyss” .

No regrets any way now of having burst out thus no matter how genuine was the concern. I believe that at least from now onwards I will be seen without any deceptive attributes, and so I will not be bestowed with any undeserving respect and consideration.

Just reminded of this poem of Gabriel Okara:

But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be

when I was like you. I want to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake's bare fangs!

So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.

MindScapeGreens

2005-05-09T16:04:00.000+05:30

I never quite realized that the routine exercise of washing clothes would take me down the memory lane, through the vaults and labyrinths of my being. Among that bunch of soiled clothes soaked in the detergent there was one shirt I had preserved for years-your favourite green shirt you gave me the day we parted our different ways. Tattered and weathered , there was a different feel about it every time I wore it.

I remember the first time you wore it. Faded jeans and this green shirt tucked in. The green you wore that day was to show you how dreary our minds were.

Animated drawings ...meshed up with obscene comments one usually hears only in the dark or mad ramblings in the daylight. The way you broke down that day shocked and intimidated by the unexpected behavior by the ones whom you considered your own folk, the very ones you helped out going well out of the way many a time…the way you sat down right on the road weeping still remains a moving episode in the vaults of remembrances archived , but not chronicled. I could hardly console you then..could one ever cheer a 100meters dash sprinter who began to crawl all of a sudden?

You never tucked in that green shirt again.

I could possibly forget those moments of fun and laughter, but this episode does touch a chord deep within letting out a silent sigh all the time. Such were the broken moments of oneness, though much of it still remains unexpressed, yet delightfully ruminated on.

You looked funny the next time you wore the green shirt because it looked overtly oversized, the tip touching almost your elbow…and the laughter it triggered was the death knell of it all…you never wore the green shirt again. I remember, I too made a remark, that you appeared like a kid. You still do, no matter how easily you hop across continents as a globe trotting professional. May be my remark did hurt you then, but believe me that is one frozen moment I still cherish…like a playful kid who tried so well to get up from a little fall.

You never wore shirts again!

...neither the green one nor the red one though both reflected well the bright hues of the kaleidoscopic patterns of your being. I thought you had thrown the green shirt away for, such was the rage with which you fumed forth, such were the sobs of mute agony that eventually silenced you.

Much later, you handed over the green shirt to me washed and ironed and told me “ now you keep it”. That was over 6 years ago. It stayed with me ever since then.

Never did I realize that you were planting a speck of green at the edge of desert chose to traverse… 6 years of many sojourns, estrangement and unexpected meeting again. I was really happy to know that you are alive, that was the best I could hope for during those years of your virtual effacement …when I had no means to even know about your existence.

Today when I took the socked green shirt from the bucket, it was just another impatient move to get done with the chore of washing clothes as fast as I could. But as I began to scrub it, I could feel myself swirling into the gravitating depths of the past. I really could not believe it, a faded green shirt that is the relic of a collapsed castle and remnant glory soon assumed a delicateness more intense than any of my choicest new clothes ever elicited from me.

I took out the green shirt on to the washing floor…the first scrub and the first squeeze, I saw green water oozing out just as if I am washing it for the very first time. A shirt I would have other wise thrown off, had it not been for that fact that it was given by you, for all its withering out and shading out lay before my as if it is the very first time I washed it. It was as if my forlorn being was squeezed and scrubbed out of its dreariness…perhaps to make me realize that in the middle of freezing winter, there was in me an invincible summer.

I felt as if every wash… every drying up had only multiplied its green pigments, and some how I feel for sure that it will be just that way henceforth for this is the only incorrigible way I could now feel the kindling warmth of your being.

Curiosity kills the cold ?

2005-04-21T22:26:00.000+05:30

Re-s-Trained thoughts running amok

2005-04-21T16:19:00.000+05:30

Generation Gap

2005-04-21T16:15:00.000+05:30

SMS Pilgrimage - 2

2005-04-12T14:05:00.000+05:30

[ It was a real delight to have her SMS wake me up…but the messages that ensued seem to have touched awaken my slumbering self…]

She: Morning here looks like some one sprinkled pink paint on the sky, spreading like slow stain

Me: The sky blushed when you woke up…or is it your cosmic mirror?

She: Yeah, I am having an affair with the sky and all those white bearded men fluffing about…I am their mistress!

Me: You will conceive immensity and give birth to bliss…

She: O’ my God…it is raining…the skies here have a mind of their own

Me: Hey..the white bearded men got pissed off by you :-)

She: I’m laughing and laughing...Yeah, I am the mother of the universe!

Enraged

2005-03-29T23:17:00.000+05:30

Silk worm's hunger
is the bride's attire-
burning desire
glowing bright;

and the idol's adornment -
rock faith
kneaded to one's needs.

and the kid's glittering frock-
innocence
expressed in opulence.

A million coffins
make a celestial bed;
Silky passions get ignited fast;
Silk routes
lead to riots;
Silky hanky
is no good to wipe off
your sweat or tears !

Silky …Sulky…Sickly
Me!

Seraphic Symphony

2005-03-27T20:03:00.000+05:30

A speck of moon
and those handful of stars
will fill up my entire sky.
Yes, how reassuring is the consolation that
I am alive and so does the rest of the world too !
So much of noise, a little voice
silence , and missing notes
will make my music complete,
my seraphic symphony !

Journeys in hyper reality - Part1

2005-03-25T21:13:00.000+05:30

Nerves of steel-railway track
trains of events, thoughts, desires,
loads of memories,
pungent, sweet, fleeting.

Tempered ,remaining in calm repose
ready to take on anything that comes on it -
a little quiver and few sparks of fire ,
receding shrill and dying out afterglow,
and then calm repose.
No one can tell
It had
100s of trains - so many times ,
running up and down
leading all to their destinations
no matter who gets off half way –
call it
premature ejaculation .
or calculated fetish.
Signal posts all the way,
like pimps all over.

Worn out rails
Are deserted rail ways …

Need more and more to stay alive,
Two rails now look like
perpetually spread legs
stretching nerves of steel
to its breaking point…

My mind is a whore!
and that tells
what the f*** You are!!

In Remembrance and Beatitude

2005-03-08T23:41:00.000+05:30

A frenzied key word search for one of my files eventually led me to a mail from a very close friend of mine. I owe a lot to this friend of mine who cared to put me back on track every time i went adrift ...she is the one who shed some light into the darkest recesses of my being that I myself dreaded venturing into. Her love for privacy prevents me from revealing her identity, but not her thoughts and reflections that i know will surely enrich every one who contemplates on it...for, she speaks from experience and courage of conviction. Read on>>>>

------------------begin------------------------------------

There are times when I hold a silent conversation within myself with some close to my heart….Those are the moments of communion. I have never really comprehended the dynamics of a relationship; I mean any relationship between two individuals, friends or siblings, whatever. But I do know that each relationship changes and shifts, progresses and transgresses. If it doesn't it atrophies. In a relationship / friendship the roles tend to get defined. Provider, supporter, giver or taker and clinger. But to avoid predictability roles need to shift now and then..isn't it? But then relationship isn't an inanimate object that we can tailor it to suit our needs. Some times I deliberately avoid speaking about certain things which might put a pressure on you to act the supporter. For I know you need to concentrate your energy on the work at hand. And acting a succour provider can drain a lot of energy. But again it doesn't mean that I put reins on every thought and feeling of mine .

You do know that don't you? I really admire your tremendous love for your work. What we generally get to see is apathy for work. Work is really a great companion, who usually stays by our side if we want them to. Therefore it deserves our attention too. Ajai, I have never been a very happy person..if you describe happiness as a kind of joviality. I do not have the kind of "in your face" happiness, therefore I risk being thought of as a morbid person.I do not have the ‘joi de vivre’, like your "Zorba".

Its sadness I am more comfortable with. It's an envelope I feel safe with. Maybe sadness and happiness are interwoven into the tapestry of my being..and you cannot distinguish the threads, which have intermingled intimately. I do love life and my fascination for the morbid underlines my love for life and the living. You have come like a dream to me and I live my life out here like an interval between dreams. I respect and value everything that you have advertently or inadvertently given to me; tenderness, care, concern, admonition, everything. And even if I do not have you near me..I have you with me.

PS the net is giving a lot of trouble..Getting logged out frequently..sorry about yesterday.

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I remain in gratitude, my friend. You seem to see all hues of my being because your's is the clear light falling on it -pilgrimhawk-

An SMS pilgrimage

2005-03-07T21:58:00.000+05:30

Here's the text of a series of SMS communication I exchanged with my friend on a sleepless night. What started off as a time evading exercise touched on something timeless i guess...what do you reckon?

-------------begin--------------------

Me: how did the interview go?

She: Flop, it was sports day. Perhaps next time

Me: Do not worry…run and jump your woes out. Take a break and travel if you can..

She: Ah..Travel… hmm…

Me: Sounds stoic…journeys are so rejuvenating, what prevents you from travelling..

Me: You must be having similar minded friends…travelling thus is fun

She: Long travel…my spine does not allow me that. Too much of nature fills me with void and friends..its a different story..

Me. Hey..real discovery is not in seeing new places, but in seeing the same place through new eyes….

Me: Applicable to relationships too..

She: Wow…that’ a good one…but no senses to understand

Me: Its beyond senses to understand , but can be comprehended at a subtle level I guess..

She: By senses I meant this- intelligence rooted in experience

Me: To know the unknown one needs to overcome the prejudice rooted in the known

She: I have had no inclination to know the unknown….if it all happens..so be it….habit, he he he..

Me: You can build you palace or coffin in your cocoon… to fly out you have to flutter your wings, and you must hake it happen…it is not habit. Freedom song is not freedom any way.

She: Great…will dig my grave …I need to come out of my prejudice to know many things….feeling sleepy…will bug you tomorrow morning

Me. Good night..sleep well !.

-------------end--------------------

A desired end for a more desirable living

2005-03-07T20:54:00.000+05:30

Just a freak thought....I feel there will be much more immediacy of purpose and sense of direction if one really knew one's life span...an inkling of when one is going to die. Lest, life becomes an seemingly endless postponement taking too many things for granted. An awareness of few years left, days…hours does really make one bring out one’s innate goodness and I wish that I die a conscious death . I want my final moments in constant remembrance of my deeds that disturbed me more than the ones that dispensed me joy, reasons I side stepped and promises I broke. Yet, at the same time I want to die with a smile with as little remorse , regret and retribution as possible. There is only one way I know of now towards this much desired dissolution - To live every moment doing everything I can towards greater common good, to reach out, to react against injustice and I believe that the courage of conviction to live thus can be mustered only if one dares to confront oneself in the darkest hours. How true, the good old saying : ”Character is what a man is in the dark!”

Sprouting Wings

2005-02-19T22:06:00.000+05:30

How true, what Kazantzakis told: "Man's wings won't sprout until he reaches the brink of an abyss!"

Elusive

2005-02-19T21:33:00.000+05:30

Moon struck
the emptiness!
Moon struck emptiness
tried to devour it's elusive possession
sieving the glow,
like sparks on the turned on gas stove,
sighing in the afterglow.

A Thousand Kisses Deep...

2005-02-16T11:24:00.000+05:30

Listening to Leonard Cohen's song "A thousand Kisses deep" had always been a stirring experience. The whole song sounded more like a chant of liberation , though i knew very little about the background of the lyrics- Cohen's experience and inspiration that made the song.Few days back I chanced upon one a popular Leonard Cohen web site and there i found the song is dedicated to Sandy Merriman , a painter friend of Cohen. Cohen payed his tribute to his friend thus. Despite listening to it many times , i could not get rid of the feeling that the song is still an enigma, especially when it comes to this part of the lyrics:
"You lose your grip,
and then you slip
Into the Masterpiece".
These words had a migic spell on me and i knew that there is a specific context behind these words and it became much clearer when i read about Sandy Merriman. She was a brilliant Painter, kindered soul whom Cohen revered so deep. Now i realise how important it is to ponder over the inspiration behind every creative expression for, it brings to light the intricate ways in which events, people and experiences are inter-related.Thus we find realities we could relate ourselves to and discover ever new dimensions latent within us.

Providence

2005-02-16T10:01:00.000+05:30

I feel i must put this poem on the web.Wrote this poem during one of the lowest ebbs of my emotional well being. Wandering on the Information super highway , that was once a quagmire of information overload and the grazing ground of dubious strangers,eventually turned out to be a kind of pilgrimage as well.I was fortunate enough to come across some incredibly interesting people. More than a release from loneliness, it was an awareness expanding sojourn.

Do not be surprised
if in the wilderness of illusions
a seed of reality sprouts and blooms into a flower.

Do not be surprised
if in the darkness of despair
an extinguished amber of hope
is rekindled and bursts into effulgence.

Do not be surprised if in the dreariness of sorrow
you find a stream of joy coursing through your being.
Do not be surprised if at the breaking point
of forlorness you find a caring hand
stretched towards you lost in a crowd of starngers.

Do not be surprised even if a chance encounter
bring us together in the most un foreseen way.

Do not be surprised, never any more for,
this is the way the unknown rolls into the known;
this is the way every unsaid prayer
gets answered in silence;
this is the way the cretainity of providence
reigns supreme over
the statistical probability of coincidence!

Light on Shade

2005-02-15T14:49:00.000+05:30

This is what i saw on my bathroom wall one day !

Of Valentines and quarantines :-)

2005-02-14T12:07:00.000+05:30

Few SMS greetings on my mobile phone fixed me this morning. Never quite realized that it is Valentine’s day today, had I known it before also it would not have much difference in my sense of well being at all. There was a time , during my college days, this day used to assume an ethereal dimension and yes, some of my most cherished memories revolve around this day , but then memories weigh more than the significance of the day. Perhaps it is because of the subtle gravitating pull of mythical forces empowering the day.

I know that I will never be able to re-live those moments again in the same way and memories …how different are they from dreams and desires as long as you miss those moments?

Walking to my office this morning many episodes from the past flashed forth, faces and voices and sensations in a coagulated mix of remembrances that look more like murk on the surface obscuring the depths. There are times when you look back and realize that you could have done things in much better ways and often it is an overpowering reckoning with the past. Do we really need to dig out the past and live through the virtual reality , it is more like licking the wounds. Once we learn lessons of the past and affirm , then the past holds no juice , chewing and ruminating becomes more of a habit than discerned necessity.

Switched on my machine, and I ran a full length weekly virus scan . Few minutes later, I found a message on the screen, It read : There files are infected, Do you want to ignore it, Quarantine or Delete? …and the date next to it 14th Feb appeared more like a metaphorical significance of the day itself. Days like these take us back in time, through the labyrinths of memories , regrets and remorse, passion, desire and obsessions . Much like a virus scan bringing forth a list of entities that we are free to Ignore, Quarantine or Delete. No matter what one chooses, it is always better to do a disk defragmentation for , it will create space for newer experiences to add on to renewing layers of our being.

2005-02-12T22:39:00.000+05:30

Of brick bats and bouquets

The balancing act

2005-02-12T22:13:00.000+05:30

Felt a bit elated today, but the elation soon died out. I know this is an occasion many would celebrate and I know that I have all the reasons to be proud on getting this promotion and a significant hike in remuneration. A multiple designation tagged with a alluring pay packet also means greater responsibilities on my shoulder and greater expectations from the management. I am not really bothered about how well I can execute new tasks, but the thought that what more can I give really disturbs me. Had this recognition come some time back , then perhaps I would have felt elated for a longer time, motivated too to prove myself in better ways. At this point all that I feel is a heaviness of being The chosen one. Many congratulated, many remarked ‘ you deserved it much before’ and I know still many more will be taken aback by surprise , perhaps irked too. Brick bats and bouquets do not seem to crucify or crown me any more in the same old ways.

True I have worked hard, primarily driven by a sense of commitment towards my profession and the vision I had behind every key task I executed. It did call for lot of sacrifices too, but then the glory was in seeing my work benefiting many, creating a new culture ( as a some one put it) in the campus. I feel content to see my work progress through every possible impediment laid on the way and traversing this path defined my existence. Misinterpretation, Isolation, Non cooperation…you name it, I had it all and the greatest solace and the finest catalyst for dissolving my woes was my work. Now I see many of them silenced ,the same people whom I used to hang around with during my initial days here. Now their silence seems to bother me. Memories of good times leave a deeper imprint, but then they are within the fringes of lined up scars inflicted by the very ones whose silence outsmarts their screams of sarcasm and gross misinterpretations.

Few more months here, and I must be on the move. I have always felt that my exit from this place would create jobs for at least 4 people. It is not that I have been doing the work of 4 professionals, it is just this that right from the beginning I was involved in diverse activities. Many saw it as keeping to myself quite a few responsibilities, but then they were extremely challenging jobs with no willing takers. Any way, it is all done and proved and I am happy that I did it my way. In fact , had it not been for the un questioned freedom I had right from the beginning, none of it would have been possible and yes, had it not been for the initial remarks of many ,when I embarked on specific tasks , predicting failures in my endeavors I would have possibly never invoked in me the killer instinct to surge through. I am glad that all these confrontations and experiences did help me understand myself better for, I did experience powerful sways of anger, disgust, vengeance, devotion, loneliness … and of course the aftermath of every bout of conflict within.

Appreciation and recognition is sweet when it comes from your own folks first. In my case it was just the other way round. Nevertheless, I am happy because there is a feeling of home coming though I know that I am not going to feel quite at home the way it was once. This recognition bestowed on me by the one who established this place , with whom I have not interacted much at all gives me hope that performance is monitored and good work is encouraged. Wish I do not feel tempted to see that brand new offer letter and letter of appreciation again… wish I could see myself devoid of all attributes,prefix and suffix. I do experience such moments, wish such moments last longer…and then I will be able to live up to that pathfinder guideline from my friend Effie – “ Remain graceful in winning!”.

I sum up thus!

Tipsy

2005-02-11T22:51:00.000+05:30

With feet on air
and thoughts on ground,
life becomes a somersault
at times.

2005-02-11T12:39:00.000+05:30

Of Life, Death and Regeneration

2005-02-11T12:34:00.000+05:30

Of Desire, Grit and Grace...

2005-02-11T12:30:00.000+05:30

Rememberence of things past

2005-02-11T12:07:00.000+05:30

Liberation

2005-02-11T11:55:00.000+05:30

Cast Away?

Travelling

2005-01-29T23:12:00.000+05:30

It is after a long time i hit the roads again...and that was a much needed break.The care free wanderings with my best friend ravi, the meaningful conversations, the long walks and trecks well supplimented by great food and drinks...it all did wonders to me in many ways. Wandering in Hampi was like getting into a time machine, and wandering in the ruins and exploring it soon turned out to be a metaphorical journey within. Goodness....there is lot to see and learn.....and now i feel the difference between living on a planet and living in a place!

Strange ways of reconciling

2005-01-02T20:52:00.001+05:30

I was on my way back to the campus, walking on the railway track hardly looking much ahead, i was quite oblivious of people passing by me. ..and most of them, i now realise that, gave way to me seeing me walk as if i have gone blind. At one instant looked straight and and kept walking and its then i found him getting on to the railway track and walked with gay abandon as if he just reclaimed his path way . Had it been any one else, i would not have felt any qualms about it, but since it is this guy i really suspected that he is all set for a confrontation or a deliberate head on collision if neither of us gave way...and i possibly would not have moved aside. I maintained a rather cold relationship with this guy and have had numerous rough confrontations with him on the professional front and i know that he could not react much in the campus fearing official repercussions. But then, there i was out side the campus, right on the same track walking opposite to him, and he got on to the track seeing me...and more so because he knew that i saw him as well. I thought perhaps this is his chosen hour all for himself to unleash his wrath on me.

Hardly a few steps short of a head on collision....and my silent rage and anxiety fuming up.... i found him smiling at me....and he gently stepped aside for me...and his this move had no tinge of anything dramatic , instead it was courageously graceful. After a long time, we smiled at each other...and all the frozen remorse and apprehensions just began to melt away.

The rest of my walking to the campus was more of a contemplative sojourn. I have really begun to respect this person now for, i am really amazed at the way he chose bridge the increasing distance between us.Yes, now i feel that he knew me rather too very well and perhaps that's the reason why he never chose to make any attempts to talk to me directly...he knew rather too very well that i will hold on to my prejudiced convictions...and i knew this too that though he might have always despised my ill temper, he had great appreciation for my work. Well, i would have loved to hear it from him straight all along...but then...with just one single bold, thoughtful and gentle move he spoke so eloquently well.

I initially thought, when i resolved not to give way to him on the railway track, that i did not get intimidated (apparently) by his opposing presence...but now i realise that he is far more courageous than me because stepping aside to give way for me, he stepped straight into by being. Where i had only remorse against me, there dwells respect for the person he is.

Don't know what to call it...."Close encounters of the third kind" or "Closed encounters of the third kind"..?

Tsunami and the storm within

2005-01-02T20:52:00.000+05:30

Many went for a morning walk... for prayers and they just did not return. A giant wave swept them all off with more ferocity than all deliberate attempts to forget the aftermath of Latur and Bhuj quakes. I find myself writing this now at a time I also must have got wiped out by one of those ravaging tsunami waves for, I was to sail for Lakshadweep, Minicoy and Andamans islands on 26th morning, the day Tsunami struck our shores. All set to go for a week of get way in the wild, now I find myself pondering on what merit of mine do I remain saved from a disaster .
All the newspapers and TV coverage carrying detailed reports supplemented by poignant visual depiction of the trauma and the plight of the survivors, who narrated the awe the horrifying scenes of their helpless agony seeing their loved ones surge away. I avoided seeing and reading most of it when I am far away from the real scenes of distress for, it will only put me in more delusion at a time when I should resolve and reckon with the conflicts raging within.When I personally cannot immerse myself in the relief operation all that I could do is to transform my thoughts and empathy into prayers…and plunge myself into action when i get to be there physically, not as a volunteer in a relief operation, but as the one whose life remains in beatitude to the dear departed.

If we are the chosen ones to stay alive and they were destined ones to depart as if they made room for us for a longer term, then there is subtle connection between our well being and the pathos they went through. The flux of karma, the laws of destiny and the divine decree – all acting together or each trying to reign supreme in one’s justification … none of these seems to answer why is their life is less important than mine, why they all suffered out there and I was saved from a disaster. It looks much like they paid the price for our well being with their lives. I feel as if I have borrowed out their life force only to be returned to some one else…no they did not lend it …rather they bequeathed their unlived lives to each one of us, lest what merit do we have of our own to remain unhurt, saved?

Many resort to the theory of Karma, that points to the cause and effect relationships stretching back to life times, and I seem to have little patience with such explanations….in fact do we need to explain at all the unfathomable reasons behind gruesome disasters when even our scientists with some of the most sophisticated equipments remained clueless about an impending calamity. Despite the fact that the tsunami hit our coasts after a few hours it struck Sumatra islands , why is that we who revel in living in the technology era could not detect it before it reached our coasts? One group of scientists reasoned that tsunami never occured on the Indian ocean and so it was least expected that will will fall pray to tsunami attacks. This line of reasoning sounds blasphemous because how could one predict the nature of the sea and nature in general based on the little that is known. What Feynman remarked in his report on the Challenger space shuttle explosion investigation seems to be assuming increasing relevance here "For successful technology, reality should take precedence over public opinion because nature cannot be fooled!".If in this life one reaps the effects of one’s deeds in previous lives while one strives to lead a meaningful life here right now, then how are we to account for myriads of deceits and acts of defiance planned but never committed. Sure, actions are guided by thoughts. We are entering into a blind alley in reasoning out thus and what I feel could be done at best is to see for ourselves what we can do in terms of reaching out to the needy and invoking within us a deep sense of oneness amidst the teeming adversities and atrocities. If reaching out is not possible in physical terms, surely we can at least reach out in subtle ways….every empathetic thought transformed into prayers is indeed reaching out thus.

My initial reaction was a bewilderment at the thought that how could nature be so cruel , and she seems to have such inimitable ways of unleashing her fury. But on the other side I am equally aware of the fact that we are her children and she cradled us all ever since the first sprout of life on earth. It is we , whose need mounted to greed, began the plunder and destruction of natural resources in a ravaging spree ….while she must have watched it all with disbelief….then with pain and mute agony…..and when she reached the breaking point of torment she must have sighed with utmost restraint for, had this epicenter been else where on the shore, then perhaps more then half the population of the continent could have got wiped out . She must have contained the terrible distress within, to save the rest of her children that includes all of us. Her next scream of agony could swing around with our lives, though not directed towards us. Before she reclaims us back to her being, there is much we can do … to be ready to depart any time and that courage of conviction comes only from discovering a deeper meaning of life and really living it out and not reasoning out what led to their fall while we ourselves do not know on what merit of ours do we remain safe.

Then….the obvious natural question is “ How can God be so cruel?”, and I believe that cruelty is an term and approach we humans invented and so the answer too must come from deep within us. This beautiful, bountiful nature has her breaking points as well….am just reminded of these words of the French physicist-philosopher Blaise Pascal: “ Nature has got perfections in order to show that she is the reflection of god, she has imperfections too to show that she is just a reflection!”